North Korean Tour Companies Are Now Catering to Pickup Artists
Koryo Tours, a Chinese company that brings foreigners into North Korea, is ready to capitalize on a male population eager to visit the region: self-professed pickup artists.
.Koryo Tours, a Chinese company that brings foreigners into North Korea, is ready to capitalize on a male population eager to visit the region: self-professed pickup artists. NK News points to a blog Koryo Tours published Friday morning, which answers the question "PUAs" really want to know. Can you "hook up with a local girl" on your tour?
The short answer is no, of course not. But that won't stop PUAs from trying — getting one's "NK flag" (having sex with a North Korean woman) is considered to be the highest level of accomplishment in the "game."
PUAs are willing to spend lots of money on what they call "love tourism." Love tourism consists of gaming unsuspecting, "submissive" women who live in traditional cultures untainted by Western influence. Western women, PUAs lament, have often discovered their own independence and therefore are more impervious to game.
If you don't get that NK flag while you're in the country, Koryo Tours' Simon Cockerell wants you to know that you're not alone. "Thwarted Casanovas shouldn’t feel too down about it," he writes in the blog. "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!" (So make sure you book your trip now.)
North Korean women are the ultimate worthy challenge for PUAs because they've been both sheltered from Western influence and are also unavailable. As Cockerell explains,
While not technically illegal [hooking up with a North Korean woman] isn’t something which is commonly achieved. ... North Korea places great pride in its national homogeneity and is a deeply conservative culture, thus 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 (the men too, despite their bouts of braggadocio and masculine preening regarding their pick-up skills), not to mention somewhat unprofessional for people in the service industry.
Koryo Tours isn't the first to infiltrate the PUA market. Joseph Ferris, who leads tours in North Korea with Young Pioneer Tours, joined one of the darkest corners of the internet last year to make his pitch — the Roosh V forum. The forum is for amateur PUAs and devotees of Roosh V, a famous PUA. Roosh has published a series of love travel guides, with creative titles like Bang Colombia and Don't Bang Denmark. After users posted photos of Terris with North Korean women and known PUA Neil Strauss in the forum, he wrote,
Yeah, that's me in a couple of those photos with the girl — yes, we brought Neil Strauss in on one of my trips. If I had sex with a North Korean girl — I will never tell, not even for that promised $20!
Terris has the lowest number of stars possible on the forum for that comment — he's ranked as a "male feminist." But he did offer Roosh devotees a chance to learn more about his tours of the region.
Poke around and you can see that I really work there as part time guide — about 97 percent of the photos on the site are my work. ... I love the North Korean guides I work with, they are fun and love to drink, and tell dirty jokes. Yeah, North Korean girls are super flirty — I love it, but there is no chance in hell anyone is going to get laid there. Its never happened in the history of modern tourism — including me.
Not even Roosh himself has completed a successful love tour of the DPRK. Ferris at least danced with one woman:
PUAs won't give up, however. Some say they're just waiting for the right moment to visit: "I think we are all hoping for a regime change or revolution in North Korea ASAP," chochemonger1 writes on the forum. "Many of us would be headed there immediately. We all know pussy paradises don't last very long nowadays."
In the meantime, Young Pioneer Tours and Koryo Tours are happy to take their money. Ferris writes, "Just make sure you hit me up at joseph@youngpioneertours.com — I can get you 5 percent off on our scheduled trips — which are already the best priced in the industry."