RESEARCH ARTICLE What motivates people to visit an unknown tourist destination? Applying an extended model of goal-directed behavior Jinok S. Kim 1 | Timothy J. Lee 2 | Nam-Jo Kim 3 1 Department of Air Service, Sehan University, Dangjin, Republic of Korea 2 USC Business School, University of the Sunshine Coast, Brisbane, Australia 3 Division of Tourism Sciences, Hanyang University, Seoul, Republic of Korea Correspondence Nam-Jo Kim, PhD, Professor, Division of Tourism Sciences, Hanyang University, Seoul, 04763 Republic of Korea. Email: njkim@hanyang.ac.kr Funding information Sehan University, Grant/Award Number: sh2030 Abstract This study aims to identify the motivations of people travelling to North Korea, and to determine the effects these have on the travel decision-making process. An on- site survey was conducted with Chinese tourists in Dandong, China. The results of an exploratory factor analysis identified four motivation factors: red (communist iden- tity), uniqueness, convenience, and escape. The results suggest that motivations for tourism to North Korea have at least a partial influence on attitudes. “Uniqueness” has the greatest impact on tourist attitudes, implying that the most powerful motive stimulating Chinese tourists to North Korea is their “curiosity” about that isolated society. KEYWORDS curiosity, model of goal directed behavior, North Korea, red tourism, tourist motivation 1 | INTRODUCTION North Korea remains a relatively unknown tourist destination, being considered inaccessible by many people (Connell, 2019). Due to the highly rigid and monolithic political system of North Korea, not found in many other countries in the world, many people also think of the country as a dangerous, secretive, and unusual nation (Buda & Shim, 2015; Kwon, 2018). Moreover, North Korea is said to be at the center of international politics because it has developed threatening weap- onry including nuclear technologies and missiles (Kim & Cohen, 2017; Kwon, 2019), although its detractors have those and more. The appar- ent risk factors associated with North Korea have meant that many countries have banned travel there (Roh, Byun, & Lee, 2014). The market for Chinese visitors remains active however and supplies the greatest percentage of foreign tourists to North Korea overall (Lee, 2017). Nevertheless, China has been constantly changing its policy between the full-scale suspension of tourism to North Korea and its expansion, according to prevailing political circumstances (NK News, 2017). And, since an incident involving an American, Otto Warmbier, in 2017, the United States has also banned tourist travel to North Korea given the risk of its nationals being detained there (Aus- tralian Broadcasting Corporation, 2017; Connell, 2019). Despite these attempted restrictions though, people from Western countries, as well as China, are constantly visiting North Korea. Since the 1980s North Korea has prepared legal and administra- tive systems to attract foreign tourists with the aim of earning foreign currency. In the 2000s, North Korea opened its tourism industry and made efforts to attract not only Chinese tourists but also tourists from Russia, Southeast Asia and Europe (Connell, 2017; Yi, Ma, & Yoon, 2017). In contrast to the previous control method of strictly forbidding contact between foreign tourists and local residents, various tourism products involving the participation of local resi- dents, such as “Labor experience tours, ” “Hiking tours, ” and “Sports tours, ” were introduced to stimulate foreign inbound tour- ism and tourists' desire to visit (Yonhap News Agency, 2014). However, unlike sightseeing activities that take place in many other countries, those in North Korea entail significant restrictions (Li & Ryan, 2015); sightseeing activities are allowed only in places under the control of the government, and except for the above tours, tourist communication with the general public is strictly blocked. Received: 27 October 2019 Revised: 28 May 2020 Accepted: 28 May 2020 DOI: 10.1002/jtr.2388 Int J Tourism Res. 2020;1–13. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/jtr © 2020 John Wiley & Sons Ltd 1