Time for a travel ban — to North Korea Individual risk-taking can so quickly become America's collective problem: Our view

The Editorial Board | USA TODAY

When sharks gather offshore, lifeguards rightly close down beaches to save lives. It's long past time to take the same approach toward American tourists seeking travel into North Korea.

The tragic death Monday of Otto Warmbier, 22, following his brutal and senseless imprisonment by Kim Jong Un's outlaw regime, only underscores how the U.S. government is helpless to protect citizens who go there.

Why would anyone risk traveling to North Korea? As it turns out, international tour companies entice thrill-seeking or oblivious Americans to venture behind "the world's last remaining iron curtain" or enjoy “budget tours to destinations your mother wants you to stay away from!” The tour operators have often argued that the travel is safe and, as a consequence, an estimated 800 to 1,000 Americans yield to the inducement each year.

All of this is despite increasingly dire State Department warnings that read like entering a chamber of horrors. Americans visiting North Korea lose all right to privacy and risk being searched, arrested and imprisoned for doing next to nothing, the State Department advises.

Warmbier's purported "crime" was taking a propaganda poster from a hotel, for which he was sentenced early last year to 15 years of hard labor only to be brought home in a coma last week to die. North Korea's explanation for the coma — botulism and sleeping pills — proved spurious, according to U.S. doctors.

OPPOSING VIEW:

At least 16 Americans have been detained by North Korea in the past 10 years. Three are still being held.

In recent days, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson told Congress that the administration is thinking of invalidating U.S. passports for travel to North Korea. This is one travel ban that should be implemented, with waivers for journalists, aid workers and special envoys.

Americans have historically been allowed by their government to go where they pleased, assuming their own risks. But North Korea warrants a rare exception because individual risk-taking can so quickly become America's collective problem.

The U.S. has no diplomatic relations with North Korea, no leverage to force the release of its citizens. They simply become bargaining chips for Kim Jong Un in a high stakes contest involving Kim's nuclear weapons and his feverish effort to develop ways to launch missiles against the American mainland.

North Korea is also unique in the totalitarian regime's wholesale disregard for human rights. Murder, enslavement, torture and sexual violence are the currency of Kim's tyranny. Between 150,000 and 200,000 North Koreans are confined to prison camps. The detained include children, according to Human Rights Watch. Political prisoners seen as opposing the government suffer starvation and receive virtually no medical care.

Otto Warmbier's funeral will be held Thursday in his hometown of Wyoming, Ohio. In the aftermath of his tragic death, some tour companies that have taken Americans to North Korea have vowed to stop doing so, or are thinking about it. That's fine. But it's time to simply turn off the spigot of potential hostages and end American tourism to the "Hermit Kingdom."

USA TODAY's editorial opinions are decided by its Editorial Board, separate from the news staff. Most editorials are coupled with an opposing view — a unique USA TODAY feature.

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