State Department bans American travel to North Korea starting Sept. 1

An airplane prepares to land.
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The State Department announced Wednesday that starting Sept. 1, U.S. passport holders will be banned from traveling to North Korea, and urged Americans already in the country to leave before then.

The move follows the death of Otto Warmbier, an American college student who was sentenced to 15 years of hard labor in North Korea before he was sent back to the U.S. in a coma on June 13; he died less than a week later. Tensions are also high between the U.S. and North Korea due to North Korea's testing of several intercontinental ballistic missiles over the last month.

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Catherine Garcia, The Week US

Catherine Garcia is night editor for TheWeek.com. Her writing and reporting has appeared in Entertainment Weekly and EW.com, The New York Times, The Book of Jezebel, and other publications. A Southern California native, Catherine is a graduate of the University of Redlands and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.