After Otto Warmbier, detained for more than a year in North Korea, returned home this week in a coma, the Trump administration is looking into ways to stop
After Otto Warmbier, detained for more than a year in North Korea, returned home this week in a coma, the Trump administration is looking into ways to stop other Americans from going there.
The State Department currently warns Americans against travel to that country, but Secretary of State Rex Tillerson has signaled he may go further.
“We have been evaluating whether we should put some type of travel visa restriction to North Korea, ” he told a House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing Wednesday. “We have not come to a final conclusion, but we are considering it.”
Fred Warmbier, Otto Warmbier’s father, told reporters that his 22-year-old son is “a young, thrill-seeking, great kid” who was on a trip organized by a Chinese-based company called Young Pioneer Tours.
“They advertise it as the safest trip ever, ” he said Thursday. “But they provide fodder for the North Koreans, and my son happened to become fodder for the North Koreans.”
The travel company says on its website that North Korea is “extremely safe!” A Young Pioneer Tours official told a news site that focuses on the region that only one person — Otto Warmbier — has ever been arrested among the 8,000-plus international travelers who have taken part in the company’s tours.
