A 21-year-old U.S. woman broke a Guinness World Record when she became the youngest person to visit every sovereign country on Earth. File Photo by John Angelillo/UPI | License Photo

June 4 (UPI) -- A 21-year-old American woman said she unofficially broke a Guinness World Record by becoming the youngest person to visit all 196 sovereign nations in the world.

Lexie Alford visited the North Korean side of the conference rooms in the "blue house" in the Joint Security Area on the DMZ between North and South Korea on Friday, crossing off the last country on her list.


Alford said she was unable to find a way around the U.S. travel ban to North Korea, but Guinness rules allowed for the "blue house" visit to count as stepping foot on North Korean land.

Alford's record, if confirmed by Guinness, would unseat British man James Asquith, who visited every country on Earth by age 24.

"For Guinness, the hardest part isn't even the travel for breaking the record," Alford told The Union newspaper in 2018, when she still had 13 nations left to visit. "The hardest part is proving it, proving that I've been to all these places. I have to get signed witness statements in each country I go to, [and provide] plane tickets, passport stamps, accommodation receipts, log books for every country I visit."