North Korea has forced the US to make a drastic move after the death of a US student imprisoned by Pyongyang during a tourist visit. The United States has issued a ban prohibiting its citizens travelling to North Korea from 1 September.
This ban 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. 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. All the US passports are declared as invalid for travelling to North Korea.
Otto 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.
A senior North Korea development official said that “if the US government says Americans cannot come to this country, we don’t care a bit”.