WHEN JOHN MARK KARR—the man who says he killed six-year-old beauty queen JonBenet Ramsey in 1996—was nabbed this week, he was hiding out in a $6/night guesthouse in a central Bangkok district well-known for catering to both expatriate residents and sex tourists. Not only that, the 41-year-old ex-school teacher had been looking for a teaching job in Asia.

Sure, Karr could have holed up in free-wheeling Amsterdam or Tijuana or the lawless Paraguay-Brazil-Argentina border zone. But nooooo. The man who just might become the world’s most infamous pedophile (if his confession is true) chose Southeast Asia.

For many years, Southeast Asia—especially Thailand—has been a prime destination for sex tourism of the deviant and underage variety. Bangkok, like Las Vegas (and Sodom and Gomorrah), has become a cliché for wicked behavior, as in “What happens in Bangkok, stays in Bangkok.”

Officially, Thai authorities are working to change this image and discourage such travel, but it is clear greater effort will be required. It’s not enough to revoke the visas of these predators or deport them as “undesirable persons,” as Thai officials are doing with Karr.

Vietnam, for example, chose to make an example out of Gary Glitter by jailing the washed-up British rock star in June for having sex with girls, ages 10 and 11.

Karr had best choose his legal counsel carefully, unlike disgraced San Francisco financier Thomas Frank White, who hired a Thai lawyer to block his extradition from Thailand to Mexico on child molestation charges—a lawyer named Kittyporn. (Yep.)

This most recent arrest in Bangkok serves to highlight the vulnerability of the region’s children to such predators. A 2005 report by Global March says that girls between 12 to 18 are trafficked from Laos, Burma and southern China to service farangs and locals alike, while UNICEF estimates that there are at least 33,000 child sex workers in Cambodia.

Southeast Asian countries are sometimes blamed for tacitly encouraging the sex trade in order to attract tourist dollars. They’re also blamed for having weak regulations and corrupt law enforcement officials, even for having relaxed social mores toward sex.

Why not the point the blame at the sexual predators themselves? How about having airport screeners look for tubes of gel and NAMBLA literature? Better yet, stop every sleazy middle-aged white man traveling alone to Southeast Asia and redirect him to Antarctica.

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