This is entirely on purpose as you're not meant to call load_module() if you want to import code programmatically; that's what importlib.import_module() is for. The load_module() method -- which is kind of deprecated thanks to exec_module() -- is there purely to initialize the module being imported, with everything else the responsibility of other parts of import. You should only be calling load_module/execx_module tonload a specific set of bytes and to bypass the import machinery entirely, in which case you have to manage any "extras" you want, like setting a submodule on a parent package.