Well that would be an epic fail on my part then. But in my case, within minutes it went from 'pending' to 'travel not authorized' (and currently still is). I just found the statusses here:
https://www.esta-online.org/esta-visa-status/I made a visa appointment at the embassy in Amsterdam this afternoon, unfortunately the earliest date available was nov 7. So I will have to hold off on many bookings until then. Kind of annoying (not to mention the extra costs), but so be it.
I did also find the info I was looking for months ago, buried in all the sites and pages of the US government:
Travelers in the following categories are no longer eligible to travel or be admitted to the United States under the Visa Waiver Program (VWP):
Nationals of VWP countries who have traveled to or been present in Iran, Iraq, North Korea, Sudan, Syria, Libya, Somalia and Yemen on or after March 1, 2011 (with limited exceptions for travel for diplomatic or military purposes in the service of a VWP country).
https://www.cbp.gov/travel/internationa ... er-programNot sure when that was added. I find it very confusing, as all my online searching AND many official USgov pages do not mention the DPRK in the list of countries, but the ESTA form itself and the page above do. To illustrate, it took me 20 minutes of searching to find the page again that does list it. Then again, maybe I didn't search well enough, I don't know.
If I had found that earlier, I would've probably set this all in motion long ago already. But nothing much I can do about it, so I'll take this as an interesting learning experience and a better understanding of how the US immigration stuff works.
Anyway, sorry for the 'rant/excess information that most people will not care about. But perhaps it can be of use to someone in the future.