“Tourism was a major factor that allowed Cuba to weather the end of the Soviet trading system after the cold war,” said John Delury, a historian at Yonsei University in Seoul who observes relations between the two Koreas and China. “Of course, North Korea can’t rival tropical Cuba as a tourist destination, but Pyongyang’s embrace of bringing in foreign visitors is a positive sign of willingness to integrate more fully with the outside world.”

For Westerners, the annual staging of mass performances in Pyongyang, the Arirang Festival, has traditionally been the biggest draw, while Chinese have tended to make short trips across the border. But North Korean officials are clearly trying to appeal to higher-end travelers with the new cruise program. Mr. Park said he hoped to bring Europeans on the next voyage, possibly in October. He also said he intended to get a bigger, swankier boat.

The trial run began on Aug. 29, when Mr. Park led scores of foreigners across the border from northeast China to Rajin, the port town that North Korea has designated a free economic and trade zone. Some of the visitors had paid about $470 for the five-day trip, which included several days on land. Others were traveling free of charge because they were friends of Mr. Park, who is a Chinese citizen. Many of the Chinese ran tour agencies, and Mr. Park and North Korean officials were trying to encourage them to promote North Korea tourism.

Bilingual government guides had been assigned to the tour buses. An affable 25-year-old, Mun Ho-yong, spouted off some facts in English about his country: “In 1950, there was a war, the Korean War, started by the United States.” Now, he said, Korea had entered the phase of “universal socialist construction.”

In Rajin, a town of dirt roads and occasional blackouts, the guides stuck to the program, first taking their guests to a towering portrait of North Korea’s founder, Kim Il-sung, for photographs and then ushering them into a theater to watch children perform patriotic numbers. That night, the visitors attended a banquet where the vice mayor, Hwang Chol-nam, toasted Mr. Park for organizing the cruise.