The U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee recently passed a bill designed to counter censorship and surveillance in North Korea and provide outside information to the North Korean people.

Passed last Tuesday, the bipartisan legislation is called the Otto Warmbier North Korea Censorship and Surveillance Act, after an American college student who was imprisoned by the North in 2016 and died six days after he was released and sent home in June 2017.

The bill requires the U.S. president to develop and submit to Congress a strategy on combating North Korea's repressive information environment.

It also allows the U.S. to impose sanctions on individuals identified in the legislation, via asset freeze or entry restrictions.   

In addition, the proposed bill provides ten million dollars annually to the U.S. Agency for Global Media for the next five years to counter North Korea’s repressive censorship and surveillance state.