Republican and Democratic U.S. congressmen introduced a bill on Thursday that would ban Americans from traveling to North Korea as tourists and require them to obtain special permission for other types of visits.
Democrat Adam Schiff and Republican Joe Wilson said their proposed North Korea Travel Control Act followed the detention of at least 17 Americans in North Korea in the past decade.
North Korea has a record of using detained Americans to extract high-profile visits from the United States, with which it has no formal diplomatic relations.