Monday 24 July 2017

U.S. bans tourists from traveling to North Korea


The administration of President Donald Trump may have done something that people on all sides of the political spectrum agree on: American tourists will soon no longer be able to set foot in North Korea. The State Department issued the new North Korea policy nearly one month to the day after the death of Otto Warmbier, an American citizen who was detained in North Korea for around 18 months before being released in a coma. He died soon after returning to the U.S., and he had evidently been brutalized by North Korean officials while he was detained.
Once the new policy is formally announced, U.S. citizens will be allowed to use their passports to travel to North Korea for 30 more days, after which any citizens who want to visit North Korea "for humanitarian or other purposes" will have to get a special license.  Tourists, however, will not be granted such a license. House representatives Adam Schiff and Joe Wilson, respectively a Democrat and Republican, had previously proposed a similar block of U.S. tourists looking to travel to North Korea, indicating this move from the State Department will receive bipartisan approval.
Three Americans still remain prisoners in North Korea, though none of them was a tourist at the time of their imprisonment.

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