Aid agencies denied travel to North Korea, blocking humanitarian relief
Faith-based groups have spent years building relationships in North Korea with efforts such as improving farming or providing health care. Now the U.S. State Department has a visa embargo.
Faith-based humanitarian workers from the United States have been denied travel to North Korea by the U.S. government since September as part of its “maximum pressure” campaign against the North Korean government.
The policy comes even as the past nine months have seen an unprecedented breakthrough on the peninsula: the two Koreas marching together at the PyeongChang Winter Olympics, three summits between South Korean president Moon Jae-in and North Korean chairman Kim Jong-un, the Trump-Kim summit in Singapore in June, and, most recently, teams of soldiers from both South and North Korea removing land mines to disarm the demilitarized zone at the border. After 70 painful years of almost complete separation between the Korean people, the leaders of South and North Korea are opening a new chapter, with political momentum from both sides.
And yet the U.S. State Department’s visa embargo and United Nations’ sanctions have caused U.S. faith-based agencies to suspend or severely reduce their programs in North Korea.
