Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Young Pioneer Tours


 * The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review).  No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was delete. Spartaz Humbug! 05:17, 19 March 2018 (UTC)

Young Pioneer Tours

 * – ( View AfD View log  Stats )

This is a very typical PROMO page, sourced almost entirely from the company website and social media, and with the requisite "in the media" section, which is appropriate for a company website but not for an encyclopedia article. Most of the article is about Otto Warmbier incident; notability is not inherited and outside of that what is there? This needs to be redone from scratch (if it even can be). N is marginal at best and per the talk page, this has been subject to promotional pressure from its creation. It should be deleted per db-spam but it was nominated for speedy back in 2013 and declined, so AfD it is. Jytdog (talk) 19:29, 23 February 2018 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Companies-related deletion discussions.  MT Train Talk 19:35, 23 February 2018 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of China-related deletion discussions.  MT Train Talk 19:35, 23 February 2018 (UTC)


 * Delete per nom, not notable. Perhaps something could be merged into Tourism in North Korea. There are related discussions at Articles for deletion/Tongil Tours and Articles for deletion/Lupine Travel. --Tryptofish (talk) 19:53, 23 February 2018 (UTC)
 * Delete basically per nom. Setting aside the travel brochure stuff the only thing that has gained attention in WP:RS is the Warmbier incident and that really isn't about the company. Shock Brigade Harvester Boris (talk) 01:39, 25 February 2018 (UTC)

Keep per the significant coverage in reliable sources. Articles published after the Otto Warmbier incident   The article notes: "Since 2008, the Young Pioneer Tours agency built up a business attracting young travelers with a competitively priced catalog of exotic-sounding, hard-partying adventures in one of the world's most isolated countries. ... Although many details of Warmbier's fateful trip remain unknown, interviews with past Young Pioneer customers or those who have crossed paths with the tour operator describe a company with occasional lapses in organization, a gung-ho drinking culture and a cavalier attitude that has long raised red flags among industry peers and North Korea watchers. Founded in 2008 by Briton Gareth Johnson in the central Chinese city of Xi'an, Young Pioneer's fun and casual style was seen precisely as its calling card, a counterpoint to North Korea's reputation as an inaccessible, draconian hermit kingdom.  ...  But in travel circles in Beijing, the staging point for trips into North Korea, Young Pioneer Tours, also known as YPT, has been associated with a string of cautionary tales, including of the tourist who performed a handstand outside the most politically sensitive mausoleum in Pyongyang where two generations of the Kim family are buried, resulting in a North Korean guide losing her job. During another tour, Johnson attempted to step off a moving train after drinking and broke his ankle, leading to an unexpected stay at a Pyongyang hospital."  The article notes: "Even a superficial look at Young Pioneer Tours, the people who brought American college student Otto Warmbier to North Korea, raises serious questions about the practices of the company that advertises 'budget travel to destinations your mother would rather you stayed away from.' ... Gareth Johnson is a 36-year-old British entrepreneur and tour guide who identifies himself as the founder of Young Pioneer Tours. In previous interviews and his social media accounts, he portrays himself as a hard-partying adventurer. He briefly put on a more serious face after Warmbier's arrest, telling Reuters last year that 'I stayed back [in North Korea] when I heard Otto had been detained” in order to help Warmbier, or in his words, “to try and work out what the situation was.”"  The article notes: "THE company that took American student Otto Warmbier to North Korea before his detention and death advertises itself as offering “budget travel to destinations your mother would rather you stayed away from”. And even after their customer died following a 17-month stint behind bars in the rogue state, the tour guide’s site still says that “North Korea is probably one of the safest places on Earth to visit”. ... Now, attention has focused on the budget tour operator that brought Mr Warmbier to the country in the first place — Young Pioneer Tours. The China-based company announced on Monday that it would no longer accept Americans on its tours, due to the high risk to those travellers, as it faces claims that its trips have a boozy culture. ... Despite the suggestion of the company’s boozy culture, 96 per cent of the 511 customers who left a review on TripAdvisor gave Young Pioneer Tours an “excellent” rating."  The article notes: "Young Pioneer Tours, which also promotes tours to Eritrea and Yemen, is based in the Chinese city of Xi’an. It was founded in 2008 by British expat Gareth Johnson, promising to take adventurous travellers to “the places your mother wants you to stay away from”, including North Korea and Iran. ... Adam Pitt, a British tourist who travelled with Young Pioneer in 2013, told Agence France-Presse that he was given little warning about the risks and described a “lewd”, “binge-drinking” culture on the trip similar to what one might expect in Europe."  The article notes: "Young Pioneer Tours, based in Xi'an, China, describes itself as “safe and fun.” Photos from the tour company’s website and Facebook page show selfies of happy, smiling, young Westerners in the North Korean capital, Pyongyang. ... In addition to Pyongyang, Young Pioneer Tours offers tours to Antarctica; Chernobyl, Ukraine; Afghanistan, and Eritrea. The U.S. government has issued travel warnings to the last three locations. ... The tour company receives five-star ratings on their Facebook page and review sites, such as TripAdvisor. But a few reported uncomfortable experiences. One user said that she and her husband had a “horrible experience.” She said a friend of a Young Pioneers Tour guide withheld her husband’s passport as a joke while the group rode a train from Pyongyang to Beijing. When the couple was unable to produce travel documents, DPRK soldiers separated and interrogated the couple. ... VOA made numerous attempts by phone to contact Young Pioneers Tours in China and emailed their offices in Cuba, Kazhakstan and Senegal." <li> The article notes: "One of those responsible for bringing people in, and out again, is Gareth Johnson. He's the founder of a company called Young Pioneer Tours, which provides 'budget travel to destinations your mother would rather you stayed away from.' The company started in May 2008 after Gareth found a cheaper way in through Hong Kong the first time he visited and ended up getting drunk with a North Korean 'in charge of stuff.' ... The next question is one of safety. Every year thousands of people visit, and most make it out just fine, though sometimes they don't. Such was the case with 21-year-old American student Otto Frederick Warmbier, who was sentenced to 15 years hard labour in March, for allegedly attempting to steal a sign from the hotel where he was staying. Warmbier was travelling with Gareth's company when the incident happened. He was the only person in the group stopped while trying to leave the country. It's a situation I was curious about, but Gareth refused to discuss in much detail out of concern for Warmbier's safety."</li> <li> The article notes: "The negative press coverage, the group’s own tone-deaf communiques, motherloving Gareth—all of it pointed to YPT being a clutch of maladaptive nihilists who made good money escorting louche tools to the most politically and culturally sensitive locations on the planet. Even their name was off-putting. The Young Pioneers had been the Communists’ child indoctrination wing, something like the Boy Scouts (or Hitler Youth) for would-be apparatchiks. Yet somehow, this shoestring-budgeted company promising “to take you safely and cheaply through any place on the planet that your mother would like you to stay away from!” had earned a perfect 5.0 score on TripAdvisor. Which is to say that somewhere along the line there, I signed up for YPT’s inaugural Caucasus Combo tour. I don’t know—it was late at night, and I was in deep. This two-week, $2,540 trip was part of a larger Summer Soviet package that would begin in Chernobyl, stop in Moscow (where I’d join up), ramble through the Chechen Republic and then drop into the diplomatically unrecognized Republic of South Ossetia. Come mid-August, the Young Pioneers would be the first group of international yahoos to have toured the latter two republics. Assuming everything went according to plan, of course. And what a plan it was. Eight days after Otto’s death, my putative guide Shane, an Irishman one year my senior, was responding to my visa-application queries with answers like “You can use fake hotels” and “Handle that independently.” He enjoined me to present the Russian embassy with a bogus itinerary centered around bus tours in Estonia. At no point during this process was any peep made as to the State Department’s warning:[2] “Do not travel to Chechnya or any other areas in the North Caucasus region. If you reside in these areas depart immediately.” As for the South Caucasus, well: “U.S. Embassy personnel are restricted from travel to Abkhazia or South Ossetia, even in the case of emergencies involving U.S. citizens … There are no commercial airports in either region making air ambulance evacuations impossible during medical emergencies.” In other words, it was profoundly stupid—nay, monumentally irresponsible—for an American to go traipsing along these geopolitical fault lines. I knew this journey was selfish to the point where I could very well affect international relations. That I could be justly portrayed on TV as one more callous and/or terminally privileged dingus who had viewed the prospect of his death as a feature and not a bug. I knew this—as I suppose Otto knew, on some level, the risks that went along with his own YPT trip."</li> <li> The article notes: "The six-day 'Farming Volunteer Program' takes tourists on an agricultural-themed trip to the outskirts of Pyongyang, where they will get 'down and dirty' transplanting rice by hand and doing 'odd jobs' around the field. ... the organiser, Young Pioneer Tours (YPT), says on its website. ... At a price of €1,195 (£1,055, $1,430), YPT claims proceeds for the non-profit trip will be used to buy goods and petrol for farmers in the famine-ridden and fuel-scarce county. It is the fourth such trip to be offered by YPT, with previous excursions said to have been a 'wild success'."</li> </ol> Articles published before the Otto Warmbier incident  <ol> <li> The article notes: "That’s what’s on offer from Young Pioneer Tours, a budget travel company based in China, which is offering a week-long trip to North Korea called “March Juche Idea and Korean Language Study Tour.” The spring trip includes one full day and two half day lectures on Juche ideology by North Korean Workers Party members, says Gareth Johnson, Managing Director of Young Pioneers. ... Young Pioneers started in May 2008 and took about a hundred independent travelers and six tourist groups to North Korea last year."</li> <li> The article notes: "North Korea has allowed foreign tourists from a second Western travel agency to stay overnight in the border town of Sinuiju, the Washington D.C. based Radio Free Asia (RFA) reported last Tuesday. Young Pioneer Tours (YPT), a China based company that specializes in tours to North Korea, told RFA last week that tourists would now be able to stay overnight in Sinuiju, to have a better chance of seeing what daily life is like on North Korea’s border with China. The development makes YPT the the second company to offer tours to the seldom visited town: in December the Beijing-based Koryo Tours became the first Western travel company to offer visitors the opportunity of staying overnight in Sinuiju, a town located opposite the Chinese city of Dandong rarely visited by Westerners."</li> <li> The article notes: "Young Pioneer Tours, a British company that has been providing tours to North Korea since 2008, has just announced the launch its Iran service. Their inaugural Iran tour is set to take place the same week as North Korea’s much anticipated Juche 2012 celebrations in April 2012. But what is there in Iran that would be of interest to North Korea watchers – one of the group’s that Young Pioneer Tours is currently targeting with its new Persian itinerary. Well, beyond suspicions over the two countries’ nuclear and missile programs, NK News wanted to find out why Young Pioneer Tours had decided to move into the Iran market."</li> <li> The article notes: "The majority of YP's offerings are guided group tours, both starting & ending in Beijing. Accommodations & some food/drink are included, as is the all-important acquiring of NK tourist visas. Young Pioneer reckons they've got the first-ever North Korea fishing tour, and they'll take you to all the honey holes around Pyongyang, Sijung Lagoon, and Wonsan. Turns out DPRK is loaded with solid booze, and one of the specialty tours Young Pioneer offers is all about that fact. You'll hit Sinuiju Micro-Brewery, Raekwon Beer Bar, something called 'Bar Street', Pyongyang's only nightclub, and a casino -- in addition to partaking in a five-bar Pyongyang pub crawl."</li> <li> The article notes: "Meet Gareth Johnson. He’s been to the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) a.k.a. North Korea, 31 times and if you’d like, he can take you there. Tourist travel to North Korea is only possible as part of a guided tour and that’s what Johnson does ― organizes group or individual tours. As the managing director and founder of Young Pioneer Tours which currently ranks the second largest agency taking people into the North, Johnson has so far organized over 200 tours and arranged for some 1500 people to visit the isolated regime just across the 38th parallel."</li> <li> The article notes: "Even if its ambitions don’t match its actions, North Korea has succeeded in one thing: piquing the curiosity of would-be tourists. Koryo Tours and Young Pioneer Tours, the two largest companies ushering foreigners into the country, report numbers up year-on-year. Both justify their controversial tours by explaining that face-to-face interactions encourage dialog and exchanges with everyday North Koreans that can lead to a more productive way of working together. Critics, however, aren’t convinced."</li></ol>

There is sufficient coverage in reliable sources to allow Young Pioneer Tours to pass Notability, which requires "significant coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the subject". Cunard (talk) 10:07, 26 February 2018 (UTC) </li></ul>
 * I looked at all of those sources (many of the urls you provided are dead links, but most of the "originals" work). Each of the pre-Otto Warmbier sources is just mirroring a press release from the company, and we generally do not regard those as independent for company pages. The ones post-Warmbier, when read in their entirety, are all framed as negative portrayals of the company in the aftermath of his death. I suppose we could use them to justify a page about Criticism of Young Pioneer Tours, but I wouldn't want to do that. And to use them to present a neutral description of the company would not really represent the sources as they are. --Tryptofish (talk) 18:51, 26 February 2018 (UTC)
 * Regarding dead links, are you unable to access the archiving service WebCite? I am able to. None of the links are dead links for me. The sources presented here contain a mix of positive and negative material. It is possible to write a balanced article about Young Pioneer Tours that is neither overwhelmingly negative nor overwhelmingly positive. The article would discuss Young Pioneer Tour's history and services (non-negative material) and the Warmbier incident and binge-drinking culture (negative material). Cunard (talk) 08:24, 27 February 2018 (UTC)
 * I have added more sources to the list of sources I provided above. One source is from HuffPost Highline (a magazine with "a narrowly focused goal: a single, nuanced, big-picture feature each week"). In the article, "YPT" and "Young Pioneer" are mentioned 43 times in total. At over 12,000 words, the article discusses the novelist Kent Russell's experience with Young Pioneer Tours. Here is an excerpt: "The negative press coverage, the group’s own tone-deaf communiques, motherloving Gareth—all of it pointed to YPT being a clutch of maladaptive nihilists who made good money escorting louche tools to the most politically and culturally sensitive locations on the planet. Even their name was off-putting. The Young Pioneers had been the Communists’ child indoctrination wing, something like the Boy Scouts (or Hitler Youth) for would-be apparatchiks. Yet somehow, this shoestring-budgeted company promising “to take you safely and cheaply through any place on the planet that your mother would like you to stay away from!” had earned a perfect 5.0 score on TripAdvisor. Which is to say that somewhere along the line there, I signed up for YPT’s inaugural Caucasus Combo tour. I don’t know—it was late at night, and I was in deep. ... Eight days after Otto’s death, my putative guide Shane, an Irishman one year my senior, was responding to my visa-application queries with answers like “You can use fake hotels” and “Handle that independently.” ... In other words, it was profoundly stupid—nay, monumentally irresponsible—for an American to go traipsing along these geopolitical fault lines. I knew this journey was selfish to the point where I could very well affect international relations. That I could be justly portrayed on TV as one more callous and/or terminally privileged dingus who had viewed the prospect of his death as a feature and not a bug. I knew this—as I suppose Otto knew, on some level, the risks that went along with his own YPT trip." The article contains factual information that can be used to expand the article:<ol><li>"Until Otto’s death, trips to North Korea had made up some 70 to 80 percent of YPT’s business."</li><li>"Now, YPT is the second-biggest player in North Korean tourism behind Koryo Tours."</li><li>"the company has earned a huge repeat-customer business"</li><li>"almost every YPT guide has been drawn from its customer base"</li></ol>This article was published 25 January 2018, over six months after Warmbier's June 2017 death. The extensive nuanced analysis by Kent Russell in a feature magazine article clearly establishes that Young Pioneer Tours has enduring notability. Cunard (talk) 08:24, 27 February 2018 (UTC)
 * Hm, so we have one - precisely one - very good ref, that is nonetheless "hooked" on the Warmbier incident. This bumps the needle but not much. Doesn't change my !vote. Thanks for bringing it though. Jytdog (talk) 18:41, 27 February 2018 (UTC)


 * I appreciate the effort to find more sourcing; I really do. And I recognize that this pushes the notability issue into a subjective zone, rather than a lopsided one. But I still feel similarly to what Jytdog just said. If I read what you quote as it was written in context, the indications of notability are consequences of the Warmbier incident: of your numbered quotes, #1 and #2 indicate that the increase of business was a result of that incident and the negative publicity it attracted. Whether or not it marginally satisfies GNG, we may keep it but we don't have to keep it. Note in particular that WP:INHERITORG, and to some extent WP:ILLCON by implication, indicate that coverage as a result of the Warmbier incident should be treated as less significant than truly substantial coverage would be. As far as I can see, it would be more encyclopedic to merge some of this new material into Tourism in North Korea and Arrest and death of Otto Warmbier. --Tryptofish (talk) 19:23, 27 February 2018 (UTC)
 * Regarding "the increase of business was a result of that incident and the negative publicity it attracted", I do not get that impression from reading the HuffPost article and other sources. Quote #1 does not say anything about an increase in business. It just says "trips to North Korea had made up some 70 to 80 percent of YPT’s business" before Warmier's death. This does not say whether business increased, decreased, or stayed the same after the incident. This 2012 article in The Korea Times said Young Pioneer Tours "currently ranks the second largest agency taking people into the North". So quote #2 applied both in 2012 before the Warmbier incident and in 2018 after the incident. The 2012 article noted that the company's founder "organized over 200 tours and arranged for some 1500 people to visit the isolated regime just across the 38th parallel". I don't consider WP:INHERITORG to apply here. The guideline says in part (my bolding): "An organization is not notable merely because a notable person or event was associated with it. A corporation is not notable merely because it owns notable subsidiaries. The organization or corporation itself must have been discussed in reliable independent sources for it to be considered notable." My reading of the guideline is that Young Pioneer Tours "is not notable merely because it is associated with the Warmbier incident". Instead, Young Pioneer Tours is notable because "the organization or corporation itself was discussed in reliable independent sources". I do not consider WP:ILLCON ("Illegal conduct") to apply either because the sources do not allege that Young Pioneer Tours has engaged in illicit conduct. The sources just disapprove of Young Pioneer Tours' culture of binge drinking and its motto of "budget travel to destinations your mother would rather you stayed away from".  I agree that merging the material to Tourism in North Korea and Arrest and death of Otto Warmbier would be preferable over deletion. However, I think there is enough material to write a balanced standalone article, and I think that a merge would either result either in the loss of encyclopedic content or in undue weight in the merge target.  Cunard (talk) 08:03, 28 February 2018 (UTC)
 * At this point, we just disagree and are probably splitting hairs. But I think you are missing the point on INHERITORG and ILLCON. For the former, I can illustrate it this way: There is no question that Otto Warmbier has been covered in more than enough independent and reliable sources to satisfy GNG. But we do not have a biography page for him. His name is a redirect to the page about the incident. There are good editorial reasons to do it that way. Just because we can have a page about something does not mean that we must. In this case, the fact that a lot of the coverage of the company results from the incident is a minus, not disqualifying, but a minus. (And The Korea Times is pretty much a local source. I'm pretty sure that most tour guide companies where we do have standalone pages get a lot more customers.) As for ILLCON, of course I understand that there was nothing illegal. That's why I said "to some extent... by implication". What I meant is that when the coverage is in many cases unflattering or critical, which is what we have here, the fact that the company has been portrayed negatively does not mean that all those portrayals demonstrate notability as a company. --Tryptofish (talk) 16:33, 28 February 2018 (UTC)
 * I mentioned briefly that I thought that most tour companies that we consider to be notable have more customers, so I thought I should look to see if that is true. I did a quick scan through Category:Travel and holiday companies of the United States for pages that give specific numbers. Although this is obviously not a comprehensive analysis, I found that Adventure Life has 24,000 clients, Boston Duck Tours carries 600,000 per year, and Group Voyagers has 500,000 passengers per year. In contrast, Young Pioneer Tours has 1,500 clients according to The Korea Times. That's a tremendous difference, and is evidence against this company being notable as a travel company. --Tryptofish (talk) 18:14, 28 February 2018 (UTC)
 * Now that the page has been rewritten by Cunard, I went back and reexamined it with the improved sourcing. It does not change my mind. I've gone through every source, numbered as they are as of this version:
 * Wall Street Journal: a mirror of a company press release. Although the source is obviously a reliable one, they often run these kinds of announcements provided by companies.
 * The Guardian: coverage of the Warmbier incident, source would not exist on the basis of the company alone.
 * Vice: another routine mirror.
 * NK News: local coverage.
 * New York Times: about the Warmbier incident.
 * Thrillist: minor, niche source.
 * KM Group: local coverage.
 * Huff Post: about the Warmbier incident.
 * NK News: local coverage.
 * LA Times: about the Warmbier incident.
 * PRI: about multiple tourism companies, only a passing mention.
 * Voice of America: some specific coverage, but also in the Warmbier context.
 * Wall Street Journal: about the Warmbier incident.
 * Euronews: about multiple tourism companies, only a passing mention.
 * Chicago Tribune: about the Warmbier incident.
 * Consumer Affairs: warning about the company after the incident.
 * That's every source, after a rewrite intended to save the page. (The "original, archived from" URL links work, but the WebCitation ones are dead for me.) Even if one can cherrypick interesting lines from such sources, they do not establish notability. The fact that better sourcing could not be found really does convince me that the subject is not notable. --Tryptofish (talk) 16:31, 1 March 2018 (UTC)
 * , I don't agree that NK News or The Korea Times are "local" sources (in the WP:AUD sense). NK News is a specialist website for North Korean studies. Yes, the very subject matter is geographically restricted, but the website is not, neither contributors or the audience. It would be illogical to claim that entire worldwide academic disciplines are unable to produce anything other than "local" sources. The Korea Times, on the other hand is a national newspaper. Because the paper is in English, its audience is both expats all over South Korea and specialist audiences abroad. – Finnusertop (talk ⋅ contribs) 19:26, 2 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Obviously, there is room here for disagreement. For whatever it may be worth, if I give you those two citations, that still leaves 14 others. Even setting aside the specific issue of these sources, I think my observation about the relatively small client base is valid, as is my view that the material would be better merged into those two other pages. --Tryptofish (talk) 23:31, 2 March 2018 (UTC)


 * Keep per who has demonstrated the existence of GNG sourcing. It's clear that coverage goes further than run of the mill business/travel news, with or without the Warmbier incident. Promotional tone and use of non-independent sources in the article should be addressed, but this is not the place for it; WP:AFDNOTCLEANUP. – Finnusertop (talk ⋅ contribs) 14:24, 27 February 2018 (UTC)
 * Thank you. I agree with your analysis. The article has significant room for improvement in incorporating the sources I presented above and rewording and in removing any promotional material. Cunard (talk) 08:03, 28 February 2018 (UTC)


 * Delete I am convinced by 's arguments regarding WP:INHERITORG. Without the Warmbier's affair, the company's notability is borderline at best. We usually delete articles about borderline-notable companies where, as in this case, there are significant WP:PROMO concerns. This follows from the WP:ATD policy which states "If an article on a notable topic severely fails the verifiability or neutral point of view policies, it may be reduced to a stub, or completely deleted by consensus at WP:AfD".


 * It seems to me that it would have taken far less time to rewrite the article to a policy-compliant form than was spent on this deletion discussion. So either it is not possible to do the rewrite (subject not notable) or this is less about this particular article and more about the general principle of whether we should delete promotional articles, in which case I'm all the more firmly in favour of deletion. Rentier (talk) 19:11, 28 February 2018 (UTC)


 * It seems to me that it would have taken far less time to rewrite the article to a policy-compliant form than was spent on this deletion discussion. – this is a very good point. I have rewritten the article. Cunard (talk) 09:25, 1 March 2018 (UTC)


 * Ambivalent keep - I'm not a fan of WP:BOGOF situations, but Cunard has done a commendable job at both finding sources and rewriting the article. I'm not terribly sympathetic to an argument that says essentially "if we discount these certain sources [which could otherwise be used combined with others to write a well sourced neutral article] then we can't write a well sourced neutral article". Fact of the matter is we can write it, as evidenced by it having ... been written (verb tense is hard). Many of the sources uncovered and currently used are not about the one incident directly and entirely, even though most or all of them may mention it, as one would expect them to. If these were all sources talking entirely about the incident that only mentioned the company in passing, that would be different, but that's not what we have.
 * Again, I don't enjoy rewarding paid editing by throwing volunteer time at it to gift wrap the article they wanted to begin with, but if I was unaware of that history, and we were talking about an article that Cunard started and wrote from scratch, I'd be hard pressed to find a convincing argument that we shouldn't keep it. I wish we had some broader solution that means we don't find ourselves in these situations, but I don't know what that solution is, and at least for the time being, here we are.  G M G  <sup style="color:#000;font-family:Impact">talk   12:00, 1 March 2018 (UTC)
 * I strongly agree with "Many of the sources uncovered and currently used are not about the one incident directly and entirely, even though most or all of them may mention it, as one would expect them to", particularly with regard to the HuffPost article. With regard to "I don't enjoy rewarding paid editing by throwing volunteer time at it to gift wrap the article they wanted to begin with", I do not think paid editors want a neutral article that discusses unflattering information about the company published by ConsumerAffairs, the Associated Press, and HuffPost. Cunard (talk) 09:16, 2 March 2018 (UTC)
 * wrote that comment before I posted my analysis of the sources, above. --Tryptofish (talk) 18:48, 2 March 2018 (UTC)
 * I did. And I don't agree with your analysis. As a few of examples, the PRI source isn't passing mention, it's almost 400 words over nine paragraphs. I'm not sure how you dismiss NK News as local coverage... given that they are based in Seoul, with staff in DC and London, reporting on a Chinese company, founded by a guy from Kent, best known for trips to North Korea. I'm not sure what you base your assessment of Thrillist on either. They've not won any Pulitzers I'm sure. But, seems like a pretty run-of-the-mill mid-sized online media site. Majority owned by Discovery. Currently the 543rd ranked site in the US according to Alexa. A full page dedicated article in the WSJ is... a full dedicated article in the WSJ. Similar for the full article in Vice. It looks an awful lot like they wrote about the topic because they thought it was interesting. That's not quite the same thing as wholesale reprinting a press release with a tiny "from press release" disclaimer at the bottom you hope no one will notice. Both the WSJ and Vice pieces also predate Warmbier's death.
 * Beyond that, local coverage, niche coverage, partial coverage, and coverage about an event may not establish notability if any one of them was all there was, but they don't get wiped off the ledger for GNG as long as they're otherwise reliable, because they're still sources you can use to write a well sourced neutral article with. There's also a lot of additional coverage that I don't personally care to go through on searches where you filter out Warmbier's name altogether, including a lot of non-English sources we haven't addressed at all. But I suppose that's as much as I'll get into that, because I'd personally rather continue looking through old newspaper articles about a funeral that happened in 1913.  G M G  <sup style="color:#000;font-family:Impact">talk   19:58, 2 March 2018 (UTC)
 * That's fine, we can certainly disagree. I just wanted to make sure that you were aware of it. On the PRI source, when you say there are "nine paragraphs", most of those paragraphs are one or two sentences in a transcript of a radio report. And I never said that the WSJ and Vice pieces were not pre-Warmbier. But more to the point, in my opinion, even if a page passes GNG, that means that we may keep it, not that we must. The aspects of the WSJ and Vice pieces that you cite, as well as Thrillist for that matter, would make very good sense to merge into Tourism in North Korea, because that's very much what they are about. As a tourism company, this is one with a small client base in a small market. I think that if the page were written pre-Warmbier with only the pre-Warmbier sources, and if this AfD discussion were pre-Warmbier, editors would say that this simply isn't a sufficiently significant company for a standalone page, even with multiple sources. --Tryptofish (talk) 23:31, 2 March 2018 (UTC)
 * I'd like to add to the last point I made, that Articles for deletion/Tongil Tours and Articles for deletion/Lupine Travel have both been closed as "delete", and really the only difference between those and this one is that this is the company that Warmbier traveled with. --Tryptofish (talk) 23:42, 2 March 2018 (UTC)
 * And for that you're probably right. But if the focus is on whether a neutral well sourced article can be written which would be of benefit for readers, on an article (I know page views don't count for N but they do count for purpose of making more knowledge more free for more people) which has received an average of 74 page views per day following the post news feed spike last June, the fact of the matter is that it can be written in a way that is policy compliant. So it should be written. That's foundational to the project, and doesn't have anything to do with whether it would have been deleted three years ago, and then subsequently kept if recreated in its present form now.  G M G  <sup style="color:#000;font-family:Impact">talk
 * And that's a valid point, about page views and reader interest. My argument isn't that it should be deleted because it would have been deleted three years ago, but that the fact that it probably would have been deleted three years ago means that we should evaluate whether what has transpired since then establishes notability for the company separately from the notability of the incident. --Tryptofish (talk) 23:56, 2 March 2018 (UTC)

<div class="xfd_relist" style="border-top: 1px solid #AAA; border-bottom: 1px solid #AAA; padding: 0px 25px;"> Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.

Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Spartaz Humbug! 21:07, 3 March 2018 (UTC) <div class="xfd_relist" style="border-top: 1px solid #AAA; border-bottom: 1px solid #AAA; padding: 0px 25px;"> Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
 * Delete per Tryptofish's arguments, which are more well put together than mine would be, and which I endorse. Notability is not inherited, and what we have here is essentially inherited coverage. TonyBallioni (talk) 20:31, 10 March 2018 (UTC)

Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Spartaz Humbug! 06:18, 11 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Delete: A company is not inherently notable just because it exists and does stuff. "Significant coverage" to me implies a level of detailed coverage about the company itself, in and of itself. Not inherited notability from an incident that happened to someone who used that company. Macktheknifeau (talk) 15:52, 11 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Delete: none of the sources imply the company is notable on its own. SportingFlyer  talk  22:11, 11 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Neutral, leaning delete I came here primarily to deliver the recommended (but not yet required) notification that this discussion has been linked to on the "Rescue List". Anyway, I would imagine that if sources exist on this company that are not focused on the Warmbier incident (or providing "background" to that incident with superficial coverage inspired primarily by that incident), they would likely be in either Chinese or Korean, not English. Hijiri 88 ( 聖やや ) 00:15, 12 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Keep, sources provided by Cunard pass are requirements for WP:GNG, this company has received signficant coverage and in this esoteric field, makes is notable. <b style="color: DarkSlateGray;">Valoem</b> <b style="color: blue;">talk</b> <b style="color: Green;">contrib</b> 00:17, 12 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Keep The company has their people quoted in a lot of news articles about the North Korea tourists bit. I see significant coverage in The Irish Times  having a full size article about Young Pioneer Tours.  More significant coverage found at KentOnline  where they interviewed the founder.  So it passes the WP:GNG   D r e a m Focus  02:22, 12 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Note that the above comment has been altered and originally contained a really obvious and embarrassing misreading of the Irish Times piece. It still is wrong (the article is not about Young Pioneer Tours; it is about Shane Horan and his life/work in North Korea, and only names his employer once), but it should really be noted that the editor did not read the sources before citing them. The KentOnline source is also already cited in the article and has been for more than a week. Hijiri 88 ( 聖やや ) 10:36, 12 March 2018 (UTC)
 * "obvious and embarrassing misreading"? What is wrong with you?  I had two news articles opened at once, and I got them mixed up while quickly writing this.  A simple mistake.  Why would anyone being embarrassed by a simple mistake?   D r e a m Focus  16:23, 12 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Please drop the tone. You didn't actually read either of the sources before jumping here and linking them. Incrementally "fixing" your !vote to obscure that fact doesn't change that. And this is a recurring, apparently chronic problem with your edits. Hijiri 88 ( 聖やや ) 22:25, 12 March 2018 (UTC)
 * The Guardian piece is exactly what we mean by "passing mention". Interviews can count toward notability if there is a significant piece of independent reporting along with it; the Irish Times piece is just an interview so doesn't count toward N.  Kentonline is local. Jytdog (talk) 03:05, 12 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Yes, the Irish Times interview would count towards notability. No reason why it shouldn't.  And Kentonline is not some small local paper.  The Wikipedia article for it says: KM Media Group's main consumer website is KentOnline.co.uk, launched in 1998.[7] The website offers local news, travel, jobs, motors, holidays and other features. As of 2017 the site attracts over 2.7 million monthly unique browsers.[8].  So millions of people use it as a source of information.   D r e a m Focus  03:30, 12 March 2018 (UTC)
 * How can you say "yes" about the Irish Times? It is not WP:ORGIND. There is no independent reporting in it.  And kentonline is local to Kent per its name - it even is chatty local "Meanwhile, in Lordswood, Gareth Johnson wants to show people a different side to the country. One that is friendly, tolerant and relaxed.".  What the hell is "Lordswood"?  Got me.  I am not from there. .  Whatever, some people want to be loose with the notability standards and will read hard against the guidelines. So it goes. Jytdog (talk) 03:45, 12 March 2018 (UTC)
 * We don't count local coverage where they only report on local businesses. This isn't some small town talking about the local chicken farm or whatnot.   D r e a m Focus  04:07, 12 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Would you please read sources before coming here and saying "Look at these sources! GNG!"? Shane Horan is not "the founder" of "the company", and I can tell you from experience that the Irish media interviewing and profiling a Paddy who lives in Asia and has an interesting job is not enough to make his employer satisfy GNG. This is like the fourth time in the last month I've seen you make this kind of embarrassing mistake. Hijiri 88 ( 聖やや ) 08:33, 12 March 2018 (UTC)
 * I never mentioned Shane Horan. What are you talking about? The KentOnline source I linked to  talks to "Gareth Johnson" and says "The 34-year-old set up Young Pioneer Tours in 2008 after working as an English teacher in China".  I see I had both sources open at once, and originally listed the other one is interviewing the founder.  Simple mistake, now corrected.   D r e a m Focus  09:11, 12 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Would you mind striking your first two sentences, or at least adding "edited" to the time stamp in your signature? It's generally considered poor form to retract a response to someone without actually acknowledging that you are retracting it. Your initial post, to which I was responding, explicitly referred (until you altered it after the fact) to the Irish Times interviewee (whom you did not name, but he is Shane Horan) as the company's founder. Right now, "What are you talking about?" doesn't make a whole lot of sense unless one looks at this AFD's page history very closely. Hijiri 88 ( 聖やや ) 10:30, 12 March 2018 (UTC)


 * Keep It seems easy to find more good sources such as The Routledge Handbook of Tourism in Asia. Andrew D. (talk) 07:39, 12 March 2018 (UTC)
 * That source appears to completely contradict our article regarding what "Young Pioneer Tours" even is, almost to the point of making me think they are talking about a completely different topic. Is YPT a North Korean product marketed by travel agencies as Routledge says, or is it a Chinese travel agency as we say? It would be very helpful if you would read the sources and report back on what they actually say, rather than just assuming they all provide significant, relevant coverage, copy-pasting the GBooks links, and auto-!voting "keep". Hijiri 88 ( 聖やや ) 08:27, 12 March 2018 (UTC)
 * The source is an excellent one for our purpose as it demonstrates that YPT is not just a particular tour company but is a more general tourism concept promoted by the Korean govt. By following such sources we develop our understanding and coverage of the topic.  This is not a problem; it's our editing policy. Andrew D. (talk) 08:33, 12 March 2018 (UTC) ""Collaborative editing means that incomplete or poorly written first drafts can evolve over time into excellent articles. Even poor articles, if they can be improved, are welcome. For instance, one person may start an article with an overview of a subject or a few random facts. Another may help standardize the article's formatting, or have additional facts and figures or a graphic to add. Yet another may bring better balance to the views represented in the article, and perform fact-checking and sourcing to existing content. At any point during this process, the article may become disorganized or contain substandard writing.""


 * So ... you are saying the article should be scrapped and rewritten, as the popular media sources (or our interpretation of them) are contradicted by the superior scholarly sources? Can you explain the discrepancy, preferably with sources that do so explicitly rather than, as you appeared to advocate for in another recent AFD, engaging in WP:SYNTH? Hijiri 88 ( 聖やや ) 08:39, 12 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Cunard has already done good work in expanding and improving the article, doubling its size since it was nominated. My point is that there is still more to find and do.  Here's another good source which demonstrates the potential of the topic:  China-to-North Korea Tourism. Andrew D. (talk) 11:32, 12 March 2018 (UTC)
 * The book source says: "A tourism product called 'Juche study was permitted. … As it targets young Westerns, the tourism product was named 'Young Pioneer Tours' and is sold by travel agencies. ... In June 2012, 'Young Pioneer Tours', a travel agency which specializes in tours to North Korea, posted an advertisement on its homepage promoting golf products in Pyongyang." The source says the name "Young Pioneer Tours" refers to both a tourism product and a travel agency so there is no contradiction with the Wikipedia article. The Wall Street Journal in this article discusses "Young Pioneer Tours, a budget travel company based in China" and "Juche" study. Cunard (talk) 06:42, 13 March 2018 (UTC)


 * I think we should start an office pool as to how many more times this discussion will be relisted. { Anyway, I want to underline something that was mentioned above: that the comments here as of 12 March result from a posting to the Article Rescue Squad. Now, that said, I've reviewed all of the new sources that have been proposed here. The Guardian piece only mentions the company in passing, but is not at all about the company. The Irish Times and Kent Online pieces are both interviews in the mold of "local boy makes good": they both emphasize that the person being interviewed is from their area of local coverage. The Routledge Handbook is really very much about Tourism in North Korea, rather than specifically about this company, as is the ProQuest source, which does not even mention the company in its abstract. --Tryptofish (talk) 20:38, 12 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Tourism in North Korea is not some unrelated topic; it is the essence of what this organisation does. That fact that these respectable sources highlight and detail the activities  of the company demonstrate that it is notable. Q.E.D. Andrew D. (talk) 21:24, 12 March 2018 (UTC)
 * It's just one of many companies that offer this kind of tourism (cf Articles for deletion/Tongil Tours and Articles for deletion/Lupine Travel), so the sources demonstrate notability for the Tourism in North Korea page, not this page. --Tryptofish (talk) 21:32, 12 March 2018 (UTC)
 * It is not "just one of many companies that offer this kind of tourism". From the International Business Times at http://www.ibtimes.com/how-pyongyang-marathon-highlights-north-koreas-tourism-ambitions-1571100, "Koryo Tours and Young Pioneer Tours, the two largest companies ushering foreigners into the country, report numbers up year-on-year." Koryo Tours and Young Pioneer Tours are different from the other two companies mentioned because they are the market leaders for foreign travel to North Korea. For example, the Time magazine article at http://world.time.com/2013/12/01/detention-of-85-year-old-hasnt-stopped-tourists-from-traveling-to-north-korea/ discusses only Koryo Tours and Young Pioneer Tours when considering what impact the detention in 2013 of an 85-year-old had on tourists' traveling to North Korea. That article does not discuss Tongil Tours or Lupine Travel. Cunard (talk) 06:42, 13 March 2018 (UTC)
 * What you conveniently left out is that the IBT piece only comes to the two companies very late in an article that is focused on the use of a marathon by the North Korean regime to get favorable attention, and follows the information about the two companies with the statement that "Critics, however, aren't convinced." And the Time piece makes it clear that Koryo is more than double the size of YPT. --Tryptofish (talk) 19:14, 13 March 2018 (UTC)


 * very much of an aside to this specific AfD, but if the practice of participants in the "rescue squad" wikiproject is to show up at AfDs and !vote keep, this is not good and we should perhaps consider MfDing the wikiproject. Showing up and editing high quality content based on high quality refs to render the AfD moot would be entirely different (authentic "rescue") (and would take much more work and care). Jytdog (talk) 22:47, 12 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Delete -- coverage is incidental to Arrest and death of Otto Warmbier; the company is not independently notable. Name could be redirected to Arrest and death of Otto Warmbier. K.e.coffman (talk) 02:11, 13 March 2018 (UTC)

<ul><li>Thank you Andrew D. and Dream Focus for the sources you found. This extensive article in the HuffPost is not incidental to Arrest and death of Otto Warmbier. Published in 2018 six months after Warmbier's death, it extensively profiles Young Pioneer. South Korean sources like NK News and The Korea Times are not local sources for a Chinese company founded by a British man and primarily operating in North Korea. Saying they are local sources is like saying The New York Times is a local source for Washington, D.C. topics or the London-based The Times is a local source for Aberdeen topics. Here are three more sources published before the Warmbier incident: <ol> <li> The article notes: "But people are going. China-based tour operators that specialize in taking foreigners to North Korea say the ordeal of the 85-year-old Newman has not deterred travelers. Beijing-based Koryo Tours and Xian-based Young Pioneer Tours both have had groups in North Korea since his detention, and have more trips scheduled between now and year’s end. Koryo has not had a single cancellation; Young Pioneer had one, but insists they aren’t worried. ... Koryo’s tours took roughly 2,400 people this year, Young Pioneer another 1,000. Each say about a quarter of their clients are from the U.S. Many are drawn to North Korea by curiosity, while some are “country collectors,” checking locations off their list. There are thrill seekers too. Young Pioneer’s website promises to take travelers “where others fear to tread.” Another slogan: “Taking you to the places your mother would rather you stayed away from.” ...  ...  Both Koryo and Young Pioneer have December tours scheduled and will push ahead as planned. ... That won’t happen in time for Young Pioneer’s New Year’s Eve trip, but the itinerary is shaping up nicely, says White. Young Pioneer has 2o people signed up to party in Pyongyang." <li> The article notes: "'WE offer budget trips to destinations your mother would rather you stayed away from,' says China-based Young Pioneer Tours, which is run by a motley team of ex-pats. Specialising in North Korean itineraries, YPT also sends guided, mostly twentysomething groups to Turkmenistan, East Timor, Chernobyl and Chinese ghost towns. It also offers Caucasus and Unrecognised Countries tour, which pairs two self-declared republics, Nagorno-Karabakh and Abkhazia. New for 2016 is a six-day trip to another rogue nation, Africa's Somaliland, offering the brave a chance to visit imprisoned pirates and to celebrate Independence Day with shisha-smoking locals."</li> <li> The article notes: "North Korea The 'Hermit Kingdom' is also beginning to market itself as a cruise destination for the Chinese. Young Pioneer Tours (based in China but founded by a team from the UK, US and New Zealand) offers seven nights aboard the Polish-built 177-cabin Royale Star. From the Rason Special Economic Zone, near the border with China and Russia, you'll sail to Mount Kumgang, a golf resort established amid sensational mountain scenery in 1998 with South Korean money and jointly operated by the two nations in a rare gesture of rapprochement."</li> </ol>Cunard (talk) 06:42, 13 March 2018 (UTC)</li></ul>
 * Throughout my long time as an editor, I have never cared about the deletionist/inclusionist politics, and I've always tried to come to AfDs simply trying to figure out what is the best editorial choice. And here, I have been very careful to focus on the sources and present them as what they really say. But my experience in this AfD has been nothing like anything that I have ever seen before. The amount of space-filling filibustering that can be seen above, along with what can only be described as canvassing, is appalling. --Tryptofish (talk) 19:18, 13 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Assume good faith. Also some said keep before the ARS was notified, and afterwards two people from it showed up and gave reasons to keep and at least one person showed up after seeing the notice there and said delete.  There is no canvassing.  The coverage found clearly passes WP:GNG as others have said already.   D r e a m Focus  19:34, 13 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Nobody needs to lecture me on AGF. --Tryptofish (talk) 19:39, 13 March 2018 (UTC)
 * How about edit warring and posting on someone's talk page to get them to help you so you don't technically break the rules?  D r e a m Focus  19:45, 13 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Note that the above timeline is clearly contradicted by Tryptofish's edit history, which shows he commented twice on Jytdog's talk page, and neither comment made any reference to the ARS CoC template (rather indicating that they had spent a good bit of time reading through a long VPM discussion of ARS), then half an hour later made an edit to the template and mentioned that on Jytdog's talk page because the edit had spun out of that discussion. Please retract your clearly groundless accusation, as it is considered a violation of our "no personal attacks" policy to make such accusations. If you do not, a request will very likely be made that you be blocked from editing, as this is clearly a recurring problem with you and you have not been learning. Hijiri 88 ( 聖やや ) 22:31, 14 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Actually Tryptofish posted on that talk page at 8:58, 13 March 2018 :I was quickly reverted, big surprise. It would be good if other editors would keep an eye on this. And of course, these other editors went from that page to there to edit war the idiotic changes into the template of a wikiproject they clearly hate and have never been a part of.   D r e a m Focus  23:05, 14 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Yeah -- he provided an update after having already mentioned it on the talk page. And which "these other editors"? Only one editor who was active on Jytdog's talk page has edited the template in the meantime. You know quite well that Godric has his own issues ARS (or, perhaps more properly, the abuse of ARS by certain disruptive editors who auto-!vote keep in AFDs they have not understood, and misrepresent sources while doing so), so it would make a lot more sense for him to have noticed your mention of it on the ARS talk page, or Jytdog's mention of it on your talk page. Hijiri 88 ( 聖やや ) 12:24, 15 March 2018 (UTC)
 * How about assuming good faith? If you don't like it, ANI is that-a-way. --Tryptofish (talk) 20:11, 13 March 2018 (UTC)


 * The sources quoted above simply reaffirm my support for this deletion. If obvious advertising and trivial coverage is all that can be found in a last ditch effort to save a non-notable firm, then it should be deleted. TonyBallioni (talk) 20:07, 13 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Delete. Fails WP:INHERITORG and WP:ORGDEPTH as others have mentioned above due to lack of in-depth mention by sources not realted to Otto Warmbier. I haven't seen anything in the support votes that would indicate notability either with that in mind. Kingofaces43 (talk) 20:21, 13 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Delete. The arguments regarding WP:INHERITORG and WP:ORGDEPTH as Kingofaces43 directly above, and several other editors have also pointed to, are the most cogent rationales regarding this article. I like K.e.coffman's alternate of redirecting to the Wambier death article.  Onel 5969  <i style="color:blue">TT me</i> 23:55, 13 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Delete per ORGDEPTH. Niteshift36 (talk) 18:45, 15 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Keep - significant coverage in reliable sources. Passes WP:GNG. The Warmbier tragedy triggered the greatest interest in the company, but the company has subsequently been profiled in detail by the media, with info about its founding and founder.  Sadly, while the company and its business model may bother people, Young Pioneer Group has become the second largest company to offer tours to North Korea.  That's notable.  Here's more info about the company failing to prepare tourists, from The Cavalier Daily []. Here are some reliable sources with news (mostly brief but not all short) of the company, predating the Warmbier tragedy, which weakens the argument that the company's notability is purely from the tragedy.[][][][][] <b style="color:#7F007F">TimTempleton</b> <sup style="color:#800080">(talk)  <sup style="color:#7F007F">(cont)  20:54, 18 March 2018 (UTC)
 * I've been looking at every source that has been brought up in this AfD discussion. It's true that the Cavalier Daily piece is focused on YPT. But the others, some of which have already been discussed here, are sources that cover YPT as part of coverage of multiple tourism companies, sometimes giving more space to other companies than to YPT. And the China Digital Times source hardly even mentions YPT. --Tryptofish (talk) 23:00, 18 March 2018 (UTC)
 * I mean, I !voted keep, and it's not going to hurt my feelings one way or the other, but we are really making this hell on whatever poor soul has to close this.  G M G  <sup style="color:#000;font-family:Impact">talk   03:15, 19 March 2018 (UTC)


 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.