Geographic Travel Restriction to the DPRK Spans Three Years

Three years ago, at the end of August 2017, our family was forced to leave our apartment in Pyongyang. Through our nonprofit organization, Ignis Community, we had spent ten years working and living in the DPRK as humanitarian workers, and our entire family had come to experience North Korea as home. Now we were leaving due to a new Geographic Travel Restriction imposed by the U.S. State Department on September 1, 2017. It had taken us 10 years to finally obtain a stable residence in the DPRK and having only enjoyed several months in our new home, we were now forced to leave it behind, not knowing if or when we would ever be able to return.

Our Family at the Pyongyang Train Station with Local Co-workers

Initially, my husband and I began working in the Northeast Free Economic Zone known as Rason. There we provided much-needed nutrition and medical care to children in remote, rural communities. Our first major project in 2008 involved renovating the surgical equipment and facility in Sonbong Hospital. Following this medical-related success, we also expanded our work to include constructing and supporting rural kindergartens and daycare facilities. Currently, every month Ignis Community provides food and medicine to 16 nurseries and kindergartens and 6 rural clinics in fishing and farming villages throughout the Rason region.

But our team did not want to be limited to just the Northeast region. As a result, in the fall of 2008, we decided to take a vision trip to the capital city of Pyongyang. We wanted to learn more about the country and to see if there were any opportunities for us to expand our humanitarian work throughout the nation. When we arrived, we discovered that rumors of our medical work in Rason had already spread to Pyongyang. After miraculous healings from treating patients in the summer of 2007, Stephen Yoon’s reputation proceeded him. The North Korean government was already curious about his specialty in non-surgical spine care that during this scouting trip, we were invited to return to Pyongyang a second time.

In this way, Stephen Yoon was eventually invited to study and do research for a Ph.D. in Medicine in the DPRK. After approximately three years of research and writing for his dissertation, he received his doctoral degree in North Korea in Rehabilitation Medicine on April 12, 2011. Consequently, our family was invited to Pyongyang for Stephen to take a full-time position on staff at the Pyongyang Medical School Hospital.

Stephen Yoon’s Medical Ph.D. Ceremony in Pyongyang, DPRK

We began making trips into Pyongyang in the fall of 2011 and eventually moved to the capital city in the spring of 2012. At first, there was nowhere for us to live, so we lived out of hotel. Our children homeschooled in one small hotel room as we either ate simply or ate out most of our meals.

But this kind of life-style was not sustainable for neither our family nor for our pocket book. After advocating for a long-term solution over several months, we eventually were able to move into a house on a compound located on the west side of town.

After six years of waiting, traveling back and forth, and temporary hotel living, our family was finally able to live in a home inside North Korea! It was a dream come true. But as most dreams go, the reality of it was quite different from what we originally imagined.

There was no comfy, personal home to live in. Instead, our whole team had to share one house together. At first, it was beyond our wildest expectations. Never would we have imagined that we would be living in a presidential suite! We could have not anticipated the beautiful landscape that surrounded us.

Our new home was sort of a garden that I liked to call “Magpie Haven”. All around us vegetation bloomed with different varieties of pink, purple, white, and green flowers. We had several willow trees in the vicinity. Our city is known for its willow trees as the river that runs through it creates the perfect environment for the tree.

In addition to an abundance of magpies, we had sparrows, mourning doves, a few wild pheasants, woodpeckers, and several other bird species that I could not identify without my bird atlas. Nests were abundant in our little garden. Most were magpie nests, but one day we watched a mourning dove build its nest and witnessed several pairs zooming from tree to tree. The birds were somewhat secluded from the busyness of the city, and therefore, were unintimidated by people. This little piece of “Magpie Haven” blessed me with some of the closest encounters I have had with birds.

Although this piece of garden was small, and we were restricted from roaming completely freely within it, the garden was a great source of refreshment. It provided a fresh new breeze for us to take in despite our busy and isolated lives. It gave the kids opportunities to discover and be fascinated over nature whether that be the numerous ant hills we had or the variety of bugs, beetles, and bees found throughout the grounds.

The View of the City from our First Residence in Pyongyang

However, our only neighbors were high-ranking military officials and the occasional foreign guest with whom we could not mingle. We had no freedom to leave the compound without the escort of our minders. It was a bleakly isolating existence. There was no grocery store, clinic, or other English-speaking neighbors on our compound. Our children had no friends to play with, and in the event of an emergency, we were at the mercy of our minder’s availability and schedule.

After living there for four years of what felt like house-arrest, we could no longer endure it. Work, school, and home were all that we had known for those four years. We began to plead with our North Korean counterparts to be allowed to move to the Foreign Diplomatic Compound where we could at least have access to a grocery store and other foreigners. As U.S. citizens, with no formal diplomatic status in North Korea, we had no official standing to make such a request, but we made it nonetheless.

Eventually, after much deliberation, patience, and almost an entire year of negotiations, to our utter amazement our minder told us to pack our belongings. We were moving to the Foreign Compound! The impossible had become possible, and we became the first American family to have ever lived on the Foreign Diplomatic Compound in Pyongyang.

Regrettably, the product of our ten years of work, patience, and perseverance ended up lasting only eight months. Just when we were finally settling into a stable residence and daily treating children with developmental disabilities in the Pyongyang Medical School Hospital, the State Department issued the Geographic Travel Restriction (GTR) for all U.S. citizens traveling to and from the DPRK. This was not only a sad day for our family but especially a sad day for the children and doctors we were working with in the hospital. Approximately 200 U.S. citizens had to leave North Korea due to the GTR that September 1, 2017.

Now due to not only the travel restriction but also COVID-19, we have not been able to visit Ignis Community’s Pyongyang Spine Rehabilitation Center and treat children with developmental disabilities since December 2019. Our residence in Pyongyang sits empty, and every day a child with cerebral palsy, autism, or another developmental disability remains untreated in North Korea.

Out of all of the global sanctions and restrictions placed upon North Korea, it is the Geographic Travel Restriction (GTR) that is one of the most hindering to humanitarian work in the DPRK. Humanitarian workers have to apply for Special Validation Passports each time we intend to visit North Korea. These passports are supposed to only take one month to process, but in reality, they often take 2 months or even as much as 6 months just to process one single trip! In the meantime, as we wait for official permission, the common people of North Korea are the ones who are suffering.

Currently due to COVID-19, all Special Validation Passport (SVP) applications are also being automatically denied. The DPRK border is closed, and no one is allowed in or out of the country. The U.S. is strictly maintaining an all or nothing maximum pressure campaign against North Korea. The State Department states that they are in the process of preparing Multiple-Entry S.V. Passports for humanitarian workers, but again because of COVID-19, they are short-staffed and the process of preparing these passports is slow and delayed.

If the U.S. really wants to resolve the situation on the Korean Peninsula and re-engage with the DPRK, they must first be willing to give North Korea a gesture of goodwill. Trust has been broken. Maximum pressure has not worked, and the tensions between North and South Korea continue to escalate. The easiest positive gesture the U.S. could give North Korea is to lift the Geographic Travel Restriction (GTR), at least for humanitarian workers. The longer we wait for permission to provide humanitarian assistance to the DPRK, the more innocent people die. And for those of us who can call specific people by name, it is a heart-breaking tragedy to bear.