Before we wrap up this hour, is the Trump administration officially banning US citizens from traveling to North Korea?
North Korea best not make any more threats to the United States.
They will be met with fire and fury like the world has never seen.
North Korea has been accused of widespread human rights violations for decades and continues to use its nuclear power to threaten nations who oppose it.
Relations with the US became tense in 2017 and President Trump and Chairman Kim Jong Un began insulting each other over the internet, despite potentially horrific consequences.
Rocket Man is on a suicide mission for himself.
In 2018, at the Singapore summit, Trump became the first active US president to meet a North Korean leader.
The mood between them shifted quickly and they came to an agreement to denuclearize the Korean peninsula.
However, the US travel ban had been extended indefinitely.
In light of that meeting, North and South Korea also began to have open communications that led to demining parts of the DMZ and taking down guard towers.
This has been a shocking turn of events and it's considered to be the most significant time in history for the countries since the Korean War 70 years ago.
So there are a few reasons why I wanted to travel to North Korea myself.
The main reason was out of curiosity.
I traveled to get out of my comfort zone and to try to understand a bit more about why the world is the way that it is, and North Korea has always been one of the most mysterious countries in the world.
Another reason why I wanted to travel to North Korea was because one of my biggest goals in life was to travel to every country in the world and, in the process, break a Guinness World Record for the youngest person to travel to every country, and of course, that includes North Korea.
I have been basically obsessed with this country for years.
An aspect of travel that most people don't see with extreme travelers who like to go to off the beaten path travel destinations is the months and months of planning that can go into some of these trips.
I personally spent over two whole years researching and networking any possible way to enter North Korea as an American after the travel ban.
So now I want to give you a glimpse of all of the different ways that I attempted to get around the US travel ban on North Korea.
If you go onto the US State Department's website, you can find a list of exceptions that they supposedly occasionally give for US citizens to travel to North Korea.
This is what it says on the website.
The department may grant a special validation if it determines that the validation is in the national interest of the United States.
The applicant is a professional reporter or journalist, the purpose of whose trip is to obtain and make available to the public information about the restricted area.
I started to tackle this option by looking into the process of being hired by a newspaper in California and having a few of my articles published, to then be considered a professional journalist and later, down the line, asking to be assigned a project in North Korea.
So, as it turns out, there are not a lot of newspapers that are willing to hire a 20 year old without any journalism background whatsoever, who also plans on continuing to travel full time and also intends on leveraging the newspaper for her own personal gain.
So that one turned into a bit of a dead end down the line.
I was actually put in touch with one of the official North Korean correspondents for a major world news network.
He told me that it would be absolutely impossible for me to personally get a single-use passport from the US government to travel to North Korea, because that World News Network recently spent 20000 US dollars on lawyers to get permission for their journalists to travel, in partnership with the Olympics organization, to cover the North Korean marathon.
On the base that sports are meant to transcend borders and that something of this much significance should be covered internationally.
Their claim was also rejected.
This was a very discouraging moment for me, but I still did not give up trying to find a way to go there.
So the next exceptions listed by the us state department to travel to north korea as an american are two the applicant is a representative of the international committee of the red cross or the american red cross traveling pursuant to an officially sponsored Red Cross Mission or.
Three the applicant's trip is justified by compelling humanitarian considerations.
I honestly briefly looked into what it would be like to volunteer for the Red Cross in hopes of being stationed in North Korea on a humanitarian mission, but after giving it some thought, I decided that it would be morally irresponsible to sign up for a volunteer organization like the Red Cross with the intention of traveling to North Korea rather than having the intention of being of service to other people.
So the last very vague option listed on the State Department's website is number four.
The applicant's request is otherwise in the national interest.
I did fill out a few emails and sent them to the State Department and of course, I never got a response.
I guess my goal of traveling to every country in the world was not of national interest to the US government.
So overall, I ran into nothing but dead ends while trying to obtain permission from the US government to travel to North Korea.
I also reached out to pretty much every company in the world that runs any kind of tour in or around North Korea.
The answer I got back was basically always the same.
Apparently, if a tour operator who has assets in the US takes an American to North Korea, the United States government has the authority to seize all of that company's assets.
And also traveling to North Korea as an American under this travel ban would result in a felony offense upon return back to the US.
There was also one company who told me that they would not be able to take me on their tour into North Korea, but that they did have a boat tour from China that would take me down a river and when, looking at GPS satellite points, I would have technically crossed the North Korean border, which felt like a bit of a stretch and also somewhat sketchy, because North Korea is definitely not the kind of country that you would want to enter illegally.
After trying absolutely every single way under the sun to find a way inside of North Korea, including trying to get a hold of Dennis Rodman, I was left with only one last option, which were the blue houses in the joint security area of the demilitarized zone on the border between North and South Korea.
In an attempt to make a very long story somewhat shorter.
When you go to the blue houses on the border between North and South Korea, when you enter the blue house from the South Korean side and you walk to the far side of the building, you are technically entering North Korean territory.
I know it seems like a total stretch because you're literally only putting a foot inside of North Korea and that barely counts as visiting or seeing anything.
I am so grateful for this exception though, because if it weren't for this, then I would have had absolutely no way to travel to North Korea.
It would have not been possible for me to break this Guinness World Record for potentially years, until the border opens up again.
But even this part of the story wasn't as straightforward as I would have hoped.
I traveled all the way to South Korea with my friend Bryn in January of 2019
We had booked this tour to the JSA on the DMZ months ahead of time.
I have countless emails with this tour operator clarifying over and over again that we would be entering that specific building on the JSA and the DMZ on this tour.
They told me every time that it would not be a problem, that it was a part of the tour.
It was included.
I traveled all the way to South Korea just to do this tour, and when we got there they told us that it wasn't going to be included.
We are in South Korea and This is going to be one of the most disappointing days of my life.
Basically, we came all the way out here today for nothing.
And I'm going to have to be coming back and doing this exact same thing within the next few months to break this world record.
Thank you.
The part of that first trip that was the most frustrating was probably that the tour company knew the entire time that the JSA was closed to civilians indefinitely, but they lied to me over and over again because they wouldn't have wanted to refund the money for the tour.
We basically traveled all the way to South Korea to be able to look at North Korea with binoculars.
To say that this was extremely frustrating would have been an understatement.
I ended up traveling for a few more months before North Korea ended up being the very last country on my list, before I had officially traveled to every single country in the world.
When I was told by a South Korean fixer that the border had reopened to civilians, I hopped on the very next flight.
What is this?
It is a monument towards peace between North and South Korea, for a new united Korea.
They got stickers with their names and phone numbers on their backs.
So this bridge right here on the other side of that bridge is North Korea.
It's right there.
So close, yet so far.
There's like a weird hole in the gate here.
Is this a hole?
Is this the entrance?
Is this where I go?
Should I just kind of sneak on over there and see what happens?
Um, you know?
Any part of this tour, does anybody have any plans on defecting to North Korea?
Awesome.
Quick.
All right.
Cool beans.
Thank you all.
It's happening.
The Korean War left a scarred landscape and a divided people.
But the division of Korea into North and South began even before the war.
So, these are actually American soldiers that are giving us this tour.
We are now inside Freedom House.
Freedom House has been for the purpose of the reunion of families that were separated by the Korean War.
However, unfortunately it has not been used for that purpose, since the DPRK would not allow the citizens to cross the MDL into South Korea.
From this point you can see across the MDL into North Korea.
This is the lane right here between buildings T2 and T3.
This is where President Moon and Chairman Kim Jong-un shook hands during the Korean summit of 2018.
The large building which is across from us is Pamun Gok.
It is the North Korean counterpart to South Korea's Freedom House.
These two houses are very important because they conduct all inter-Korean communications between the two countries.
Thank you All right, ladies and gentlemen, you are now inside T2 of the Military Commissions.
The microphones that you can see at the table to your front.
These microphones record all proceedings inside this room 24 hours a day, and it is monitored by North Korea as well as South Korea.
So everything we're saying right now in this room, Both sides are monitoring what we're doing in here.
Those microphones also mark the military demarcation line inside this room.
So if you were on this side of those microphones, you are in North Korea.
So this time, ladies and gentlemen, if you like.
May 31st 2019 and I have officially entered North Korea, which is my last country to break the Guinness World Record for the youngest person to travel to every country.
This is working out so well.
Oh my god.
All right, well, we did it.
This is crazy.
I can't believe it.
Thank you so much.
No problem, man.
This is crazy.
Oh, my God.
Oh, my God.
Since the United Nations recognizes the Blue House on the Joint Security Area inside of the Demilitarized Zone to be a part of North Korea, I have technically stepped foot inside of the country.
In absolutely no way am I satisfied with this trip to North Korea.
I barely consider it a visit to the country myself.
But I am grateful to have had the opportunity to travel to DMZ, which is considered one of the world's most dangerous borders, and to experience what it was like there.
This was also a very eye-opening lesson towards what it means to have a powerful passport.
North Korea is the only country in the world with an active US travel ban, which means that that's basically the only country that Americans aren't allowed to go to.
Other than that, Americans can basically go to most countries in the world without needing a visa.
And that is something to be immensely grateful for, and this experience has really put that into perspective for me.
Thank you so much for watching this video.
Don't forget to subscribe and I will catch you next week.
Thank you.
