in brief: north korean women targeted by sex tourism

A Chinese travel company that runs trips to North Korea has set its sights on a new market: Western ‘pickup artists’ (or PUAs).

Koryo Tours has explained on its website why this ‘love tourism’ isn’t illegal and why foreigners shouldn’t be dissuaded from taking the journey… or ‘challenge’ is probably how they’d choose to frame it.

According to The Wire, love tourism consists of ‘gaming unsuspecting, “submissive” women who live in traditional cultures untainted by Western influence’.

This kind of Pick Up Artist thought conceptualises women who are suffering under political or socioeconomic oppression in developing countries as being more likely to cling onto a Western manly man.

Like a number of Asian countries, guide Simon Cockerell says the ethnic homogeneity of North Korean society combined with a conservative, nationalist discourse means Western PUAs have slim chance of getting their ‘North Korean flag’.

Cockerell adds: ‘hooking up with a visiting foreigner would be something a bit shameful and also something quite out of character for almost all the women there’.

But the company believes PUAs shouldn’t be disheartened.

‘We traveled there a few years ago with a group of professional pick-up artists, and they all struck out too, to try and fail places you in illustrious company!’ Cockerell wrote.

Another company, Young Pioneer Tours has been working the market after posting a plea to try on Roosh V, a PUA forum.

But North Korea is just one destination for PUAs in their grimy travel plans, with the Ukraine in its current state of distress also on the agenda.