Trump admin announces travel ban to North Korea

 

The ban comes as tensions between North Korea and the U.S. have risen in the wake of North Korea’s growing nuclear weapons program and the death of U.S. student Otto Warmbier, who was detained in North Korea. 

 

U.S. citizens looking to go to North Korea for humanitarian purposes will be able to apply through the State Department. 

The Associated Press reported in June that Secretary of State Rex Tillerson was considering the ban in March when American Tony Kim was detained by the regime, but his consideration of the ban became more urgent after Warmbier’s death. 

Warmbier was detained in North Korea for 17 months after being accused of stealing a poster from a hotel while he was touring the country.

The Trump administration negotiated Warmbier’s release. But when Warmbier arrived in the U.S., it was announced that Warmbier had been in a coma for over a year.

North Korea’s government claimed he had gone into a coma after contracting botulism and taking a sleeping pill, while the regime’s state run news agency KCNA called Warmbier’s death a “mystery.”

Trump condemned Warmbier’s death in June, saying that his passing increases the “administration’s determination to prevent such tragedies from befalling innocent people at the hands of regimes that do not respect the rule of law or basic human decency.”