The US gives visa-free entry rights to 38 countries including South Korea, Japan and France. Now however, if travellers from these countries have visited North Korea in the last eight years, they won't be granted visa-free entry to the US.
This deals a new blow to the isolated country's nascent tourist industry.
Visitors who have travelled to eight countries including North Korea since March 1, 2011 are "no longer eligible", details posted Monday on the US Customs and Border Protection website showed, and they will have to apply for tourist or business visas.
The other seven countries— most of them in the Middle East — were already on the exclusion list.
The move puts a dampener on South Korean President Moon Jae-in's hopes to promote cross-border tourism in a bid to promote peace in the region.
It will also affect tens of thousands of people from visa waiver countries who have gone to the North as tourists or for other purposes in recent years.
US citizens have been banned from visiting North Korea since 2017, a measure introduced after an American student detained in Pyongyang was released in a coma and died a few days later.
As on July 4, Malaysia ended visa-free travel with North Korea. Citizens from North Korea who now plan to visit Malaysia will need to obtain a visa before they land in the country. The development took place amid a fallout due to security reasons between the two nations.
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un's half brother Kim Jong Nam, died after a Vietnamese woman allegedly smeared a nerve agent on the latter at the Kuala Lumpur airport.
