ssh remote port forwarding: connection refused

tcp   0   0 127.0.0.1:1234    0.0.0.0:*               LISTEN   14460/1         

Problem can be very well seen in the output of netstat. Your remote machine is listening on 127.0.0.1:1234, which is only available for local connection from that machine.

For ssh -g (gateway option) to work, you must specify wildcard address or some interface address reachable from the foreign client like:

ssh -g -R 0.0.0.0:1234:0.0.0.0:8000 me@my-remote-host

Solution found is https://superuser.com/questions/588591/how-to-make-ssh-tunnel-open-to-public:

We have to set bind address like this:

ssh -R 0.0.0.0:1234:0.0.0.0:8000 me@my-remote-host