All Americans who are currently in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, also known as North Korea, have been ordered to leave the country as two of the leading companies that host tours of the country say they have been told to expect a complete travel ban announcement as soon as next week.
The ban will also include Christian missionaries and Americans who are working on humanitarian aid projects. It’s not believed the ban is related to an impending attack, but rather on a new round of stiff economic sanctions aimed at the Hermit Kingdom.
North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un, as has his father before him, made it a practice of kidnapping Americans in response to sanction announcements. The most notable of these cases is that of Jewish-American college student Otto Warmbier, who was kidnapped, charged with a crime against the state and sentenced to prison—where he was brutally beaten, resulting in his death last month.
Currently, three other Americans are in North Korean custody:
- Kim Dong-chul, a 62-year-old South Korean-born naturalized U.S. who was sentenced to 10 years of hard labor in April of 2016 for alleged spying;
- Korean-American professor Kim Sang-duk, also known as “Tony” Kim, who worked at the Pyongyang University of Science and Technology and was detained without official cause in April; and
- Kim Hak-song, who also worked at PUST and was detained in May on suspicion of “hostile acts” against the state.
Young Pioneer Tours, which hosted the tour group from which Warmbier was taken, issued this statement:
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