Americans are prohibited from visiting the country following a new travel ban

Pyongyang University of Science and Technology (PUST), North Korea’s only Western-funded university, will start the fall semester without its dozens of American staff after failing to secure exemptions to a U.S. travel ban that starts on Friday.

PUST — home to the largest concentration of foreigners in the reclusive state — plans to revise courses and teaching schedules but its largely English-based curriculum will be heavily impacted, two sources familiar with PUST’s operations said.

PUST was founded in 2010 by a Korean American evangelical Christian with the goal of helping North Korea’s future elite learn the skills to modernise the isolated country and engage with the outside world.

In mid-July, however, the U.S. State Department announced a ban on Americans travelling to North Korea following the death earlier this year of an American student who had been detained by the state while on a tour. It advised U.S. citizens living there to leave.

Since then, tensions on the Korean peninsula have escalated significantly.

60 U.S. citizens

Of the roughly 130 foreigners at PUST including faculty members, staffers and family members, about 60 were U.S. citizens, one of the sources said, asking not to be named. None had received special permission to stay and all have now left Pyongyang.

The ban makes North Korea the only country in the world Americans are currently banned by the State Department from visiting.

The university was seen as a rare experiment in academic diplomacy with a country increasingly entirely isolated from the rest of the world due to tightening sanctions.