US travel ban to North Korea takes effect Sept 1

WASHINGTON: The US issued a ban on Wednesday prohibiting its citizens travelling to North Korea, a move triggered by the death of a US student imprisoned by Pyongyang during a tourist visit.

The ban, which comes into effect Sept 1, was introduced after officials said the ‘serious risk’ of arrest by Pyongyang officials during tourist travel presented an ‘imminent danger to the physical safety’ of its citizens.

“All United States passports are declared invalid for travel to, in, or through the DPRK unless specially validated for such travel,” read the restriction in the US government’s Federal Register, using the acronym for North Korea’s official name.

Strict warnings against travel to the North were already in place before the ban was first announced last month following the death of American student Otto Warmbier.

Warmbier, 22, a student at the University of Virginia, died in June after being held by Pyongyang for more than a year on charges of stealing a propaganda poster from a North Korean hotel.

He had been sentenced to 15 years’ hard labour in the North, but was sent home in a mysterious coma in June and died soon afterwards.

US President Donald Trump slammed Warmbier’s detention and eventual death as ‘a total disgrace’, pledging 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’.

The new ban will remain in effect for one year, unless it is revoked sooner by US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson.

Exemptions will be allowed in specific cases for humanitarian travel and journalists.

Tour companies said the ban would significantly reduce the numbers of Western tourists to the impoverished country. — AFP