AMERICAN
citizens have been ordered to leave North Korea by September 1 at the
latest as a ban prohibiting them from traveling to the country comes to
fruition.
An exemption was noted for approved humanitarian travel and for journalists in some circumstances.
The ban is to remain in effect for one year, unless it is revoked sooner by US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson.
The travel ban was first announced last month in the wake of the death of American student Otto Warmbier.
Warmbier,
22, died in June after being held for more than a year on charges of
stealing a propaganda poster from a North Korean hotel.
A
statement reads: “The Department of State has determined that the
serious risk to United States nationals of arrest and long-term
detention represents imminent danger to the physical safety of United
States nationals traveling to and within the Democratic People’s
Republic of Korea (DPRK).”
“All United States passports are
declared invalid for travel to, in, or through the DPRK unless specially
validated for such travel,” it added.
After Warnbier’s death,
President Trump said he was determined 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.”
from dailystar