{"id":55069,"date":"2023-05-17T17:00:07","date_gmt":"2023-05-17T08:00:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.dailynk.com\/english\/?p=55069"},"modified":"2026-04-05T12:33:57","modified_gmt":"2026-04-05T03:33:57","slug":"a-look-behind-north-korea-schemes-entice-foreigners-stay-country","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.dailynk.com\/english\/a-look-behind-north-korea-schemes-entice-foreigners-stay-country\/","title":{"rendered":"A look behind N. Korea&#8217;s schemes to entice foreigners to stay in the country"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">In 2017, an international train bound for Sinuiju was waiting to depart from a station in Pyongyang.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cIn ten minutes, this train will depart from Pyongyang, the revolutionary heart and capital city of North Korea. We ask all passengers to please take their seats.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The announcer\u2019s voice rang out inside one of the passenger cars where a man and woman sat huddled off to one side. The man in his early 30s &#8211; who anyone, with just a glance, could guess was Chinese &#8211; spoke urgently with the woman sitting primly beside him.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The woman, dressed in <em>hanbok<\/em> with a white cropped jacket and black skirt, was Ms. Lee, an employee at Pyongyang Hotel. She had graduated from the hotel business administration department of Pyongyang Tourism College and was subsequently sent to work as a hotelier at Pyongyang Hotel. Why then did she follow a Chinese man onto a train, and just what were they discussing so urgently?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The man on the train happened to be Mr. Peng, a Chinese national who had visited North Korea as a tourist and previously caught the attention of North Korea\u2019s <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Ministry of State Security<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> as the owner of a large ore company based in China. Upon confirming Mr. Peng\u2019s North Korea-friendly disposition, the Ministry of State Security called up Ms. Lee and tasked her with the secret mission to \u201ccharm Mr. Peng and get him to stay in North Korea.\u201d The mission was a strategy to try to attract foreign capital to North Korea by tying wealthy foreigners to the country.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Ms. Lee, chosen for the task based on the basis of her Chinese language proficiency, intentionally approached Mr. Peng at the hotel and became a constant companion on his sightseeing trips. After a day\u2019s sightseeing was over, Mr. Peng would return alone to the hotel and Ms. Lee then joined him in his hotel room to share a drink to assuage his loneliness.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Then, on the day before Mr. Peng was scheduled to leave the country, Ms. Lee suggested that \u201cas it was [their] final night, [they] should drink together and have the kind of conversations you can only have in the dark of night.\u201d Mr. Peng did not object. That night, Ms. Lee made her confession, asking Mr. Peng, \u201cWhat do you think about me? We\u2019ve only known each other a few days, but you\u2019ve already made your way into my heart.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Mr. Peng, who seemed to reciprocate Ms. Lee\u2019s feelings, suggested that she \u201cgo with [him] to live together in China.\u201d\u00a0 In response, Ms. Lee quickly ended the conversation, rebutting \u201cWhat\u2019s so important about where you live so long as you\u2019re in love?\u201d The two of them soon turned out the lights in the room.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">This conversation was picked up by the <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Ministry of State Security\u2019s<\/span> <span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">listening devices inside the hotel room. The next day, the ministry had Ms. Lee send Mr. Peng off at the train station.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">On board the train with Mr. Peng at Pyongyang Station, Ms. Lee tearfully beseeched her lover, \u201cIf you go now, when will I see you again? I love you. Can\u2019t you just live with me here?\u201d Mr. Peng answered her plea with tears in his own eyes. \u201cI\u2019ll go to China to get my parents\u2019 permission and then return for you. This isn\u2019t goodbye, so don\u2019t worry,\u201d he told her as he wrote down his Chinese cell phone number.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Ms. Lee continued to cling to Mr. Peng. She pleaded ardently with him, sending him off with a final request that \u201cthe trip to Sinuiju takes a little over four hours, so contact me if you change your mind on the way.\u201d However, no call came when the train arrived in Sinuiju. Even after the year ended, no call ever came.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">In the end, the scheme to entice the Chinese businessman into staying in North Korea failed, and the female hotel employee responsible &#8211; Ms. Lee &#8211; was ultimately disappeared by the Ministry of State Security.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Her story has since regularly appeared as part of Ministry of State Security training for hotel employees who interact with foreign guests. The educational training explains her case as one where \u201cshe was unable to act sufficiently genuine, her target noticed this, and she was exposed,\u201d and that those who \u201ccan make foreigners or citizens of enemy states stay in the fatherland [North Korea] <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">will be <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">heroes.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It was later learned that Mr. Peng had actually returned to China and asked his parents for permission to return to North Korea to do business and take Ms. Lee as his wife. However, a member of China\u2019s <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Ministry of State Security<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> who was close to Mr. Peng\u2019s parents happened to overhear the story and tipped them off that it was a North Korean government scheme, thus revealing the truth of Ms. Lee\u2019s \u201cfake love\u201d to a heartbroken Mr. Peng.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">She brought Mr. Peng to tears twice, but was Ms. Lee\u2019s love <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">real<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">? While it remains a mystery as to whether anyone working at a Pyongyang hotel believes that they will be heroes if they can successfully seduce foreign tourists into staying in North Korea, the question also remains as to how many foreign tourists could really be fooled into staying in North Korea out of \u201cfake love.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b><i>Translated by Rose Adams. Edited by Robert Lauler.\u00a0<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n<p><em>Daily NK works with a network of reporting partners who live inside North Korea and China. Their identities remain anonymous due to security concerns. More information about Daily NK\u2019s reporting partner network and information gathering activities can be found on our FAQ page\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.dailynk.com\/english\/faq\/\">here<\/a>.\u00a0\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n<p><i>Please direct any comments or questions about this article to dailynkenglish@uni-media.net.<\/i><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.dailynk.com\/20230512-3\/\"><i>Read in Korean<\/i><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In 2017, an international train bound for Sinuiju was waiting to depart from a station in Pyongyang.\u00a0 \u201cIn ten minutes, this train will depart from Pyongyang, the revolutionary heart and capital city of North Korea. We ask all passengers to please take their seats.\u201d The announcer\u2019s voice rang out inside one of the passenger cars [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":190,"featured_media":42766,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[644],"tags":[759,1656],"class_list":["post-55069","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-analysis-and-opinion","tag-china","tag-dprk"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v27.7 (Yoast SEO v28.4) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-premium-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>A look behind N. 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