With the recent arrest of American student Otto Warmbier, tourism to North Korea has deservedly come under fire. Yet, despite the risk of being detained by North Korean authorities and the high cost of trips to North Korea, people are still traveling to the isolated state.

While some tourists may convince themselves that they are helping to open up North Korea, more selfish reasons often underlie tourists’ travel to North Korea: They often go for the sense of adventure inherent in traveling to one of the world’s most authoritarian states with a vast prison camp system, a nuclear