Shortly after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, freelance photographer Jang Jinyoung crossed from Poland into Lviv and travelled on to Kyiv, where he spent a fortnight documenting the war.
South Korea’s foreign ministry had designated Ukraine off-limits days earlier, making unauthorised visits a criminal offence. He knew he was breaking the law but went anyway, as no Korean journalist had yet reported from inside the country.
“Everything back home was being relayed through foreign outlets. I wanted to see it more directly for myself,” Jang told the Guardian.
On his return he was placed under criminal investigation. After refusing to accept a summary fine, a court north-west of Seoul this month convicted him and fined him 5m won (US$3,600).
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Many countries release travel advisories for their citizens, but South Korea is one of the few developed democracies that criminalises visits to blacklisted countries. On Friday, the country’s maximum penalty for such an offence tripled – from a year in prison or a 10m-won (US$7,200) fine to three years or a 30m won (US$21,700) fine, at the court’s discretion.
The government says the system is necessary to protect citizens’ lives and safety, but critics argue the restrictions go beyond what’s required, and those with a genuine need to travel, including journalists and aid workers, are being unfairly caught out by the law.
The foreign ministry says it grants 5,000 to 6,000 exceptions a year, including about 50 to journalists. But permission is discretionary and decided case by case. In Jang’s case, the application process for Ukraine specifically had not opened when he departed for the country.
His case has been condemned by domestic and international press groups, and he is appealing against his conviction and plans to challenge the law at the constitutional court. He wants the permit system replaced with one where journalists simply notify the authorities of their plans.
“Permission is control, and control over what gets covered reaches into editorial territory. The ban is the biggest barrier there is for anyone trying to report what is really happening in a conflict.”
The travel ban in its current form began in 2007, when 23 members of a South Korean church travelled to Afghanistan against government warnings and were seized by the Taliban. Two were shot dead, and the remaining 21 returned after Seoul negotiated directly with their captors.
Within weeks the government designated Afghanistan, Iraq and Somalia as travel-ban areas, making unauthorised visits a crime.
The current restrictions currently cover 10 countries in their entirety, including Ukraine, Iran, Iraq, Sudan and Haiti, with partial bans on a dozen more, among them Myanmar and Gaza.
The decision to impose stricter penalties followed 2025 revelations that hundreds of South Koreans had been lured to Cambodia by fake job adverts and held in compounds run by fraud syndicates. The areas banned by the government in Cambodia were downgraded in July, after the ministry recorded a 94% fall in reports of Koreans being confined against their will.
But the law has entangled people travelling for reasons far removed from the scam compounds, including journalists, rights activists and aid workers.
Data released to the office of opposition lawmaker Kim Gunn shows the ministry reported 22 people to police in the first seven months of this year – more than double the total for 2025 and the most since 2020. Over the past decade, it has reported 120 people.
All but one of this year’s cases concerned Europe, where the travel ban covers all of Ukraine, along with stretches of Russia and Belarus on the Ukrainian border.
Earlier this month, police opened a criminal investigation into six South Korean activists who had travelled to Kyiv to lobby against the forced repatriation of two North Korean prisoners of war.
The law also allows the ministry to invalidate passports without any criminal case. It used this in March against Kim Ahyun, a peace activist known as Haecho, as she prepared to join a Gaza aid flotilla. On Thursday the Seoul administrative court rejected her challenge. Unless it is overturned, she cannot travel abroad at all.
In a statement, the foreign ministry said that by restricting passport use, the law had played an important role in protecting Korean lives over two decades, and denied that it amounted to censorship.
“It is the minimum measure necessary to secure the lives and physical safety of citizens in dangerous areas”, it said.
Jong-Chul Kim, a public interest lawyer who has been assisting Haecho, said the system was disproportionate, punishing people after they travel and stripping passports before they go.
“The travel ban system, which has a strongly paternalistic character, not only infringes on individuals’ freedom to make their own choices regarding movement, but also seriously reduces the space for international civil society activities”, he said.
Aid agencies working out of South Korea face the same restrictions and have long pressed for overseas relief work to be recognised as a category in its own right, saying they cannot get permission under the current system. A bill to do that has sat before parliament since 2024.
Jun Mo Lee, who runs the Korean office of the Irish aid agency Concern Worldwide, said that with proper security systems, risk assessments and guidelines in place, there were many countries where humanitarian workers could safely be allowed to travel.
“What we need is not less protection, but a more practical and proportionate system that balances safety with humanitarian access,”Lee said.
South Korea’s foreign ministry had designated Ukraine off-limits days earlier, making unauthorised visits a criminal offence. He knew he was breaking the law but went anyway, as no Korean journalist had yet reported from inside the country.
This report is published with credit to theguardian.com. Full available text from the wire is above. Read on theguardian.com →
Source: theguardian.com · Raphael Rashid in Seoul. Published 29 Aug 2026, 12:00 am.
