young pioneer tours drunk

Inside the Sketchy Travel Company That Took Otto Warmbier to North Korea

In an interview with The Telegraph , Warmbier’s father strongly criticizes YPT for what they are doing.

“This Chinese company has slick ads on the internet, claiming no American ever gets detained,” he said.  “Otto is a young adventure-seeking kid. They lure Americans. And that’s what happened to my son.  He was trying to leave the country and he was taken hostage. They advertise it as the safest tour ever. But they provide fodder for the North Koreans. They took him hostage. And the outcome is self-evident.”

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The Untold Story of Otto Warmbier, American Hostage

By Doug Bock Clark

This story was featured in The Must Read, a newsletter in which our editors recommend one can’t-miss GQ story every weekday. Sign up here to get it in your inbox.

On a humid morning in June 2017, in a suburb outside Cincinnati, Fred and Cindy Warmbier waited in agony. They had not spoken to their son Otto for a year and a half, since he had been arrested during a budget tour of North Korea. One of their last glimpses of him had been from a televised news conference in Pyongyang, during which their boy—a sweet, brainy 21-year-old scholarship student at the University of Virginia—confessed to undermining the regime at the behest of the unlikely triumvirate of an Ohio church, a university secret society, and the American government by stealing a propaganda poster. He sobbed to his captors, “I have made the single worst decision of my life. But I am only human.… I beg that you find it in your hearts to give me forgiveness and allow me to return home to my family.” Despite his pleas, he was sentenced to 15 years of hard labor and vanished into the dictatorship's prison system.

Fred and Cindy had so despaired during their long vigil that at one point they allegedly told friends that Otto had probably been killed. On her son's 22nd birthday, Cindy lit Chinese-style lanterns and let the winter winds loft the flame-buoyed balloons toward North Korea, dreaming they might bear her message to her son. “I love you, Otto,” she said, then sang “Happy Birthday.”

But on that June morning, the Warmbiers were anticipating news of a secret State Department mission to free Otto. Upon learning that Otto was apparently unconscious, President Trump had directed an American team to fly into North Korea, and now progress of the mission was being monitored at the highest level of the government. No assurances had been made that the young man would actually be released, and so the officials were on tenterhooks as well. According to an official, at 8:35 A.M., Secretary of State Rex Tillerson telephoned the president to announce that Otto was airborne. The president reportedly signed off by saying, “Take care of Otto.” Then Rob Portman, the Ohio senator who helped oversee efforts to repatriate Otto, called to inform the Warmbiers that the air ambulance had just entered Japanese airspace: Otto would be home that night.

Still, Cindy knew her son was not through danger yet. In advance of the rescue, Portman had informed her that Otto had been unconscious for months, according to the North Koreans, though no one knew the exact extent of the injury. “Can you tell me how Otto's brain is functioning?” she asked.

Portman answered that Otto appeared to have severe brain damage.

Cindy told news outlets that she imagined that might mean Otto was asleep or in a medically induced coma. The Warmbiers were optimistic, up-by-their-bootstraps patriots, and they hoped that with American health care and their love, their son might again become the vivacious person he'd been when he left.

Otto Warmbier was transferred to an ambulance upon his return home to Cincinnati in June 2017.

Now Portman and his staff scrambled to prepare the homecoming, rerouting the plane from Cincinnati's international airport to a smaller municipal one, which would be more private. As the sun went down, a crowd waved handmade signs welcoming Otto home, and TV crews pushed their cameras against the bars of the perimeter fence. The sleek luxury plane taxied to some hangars, where the Warmbiers waited nearby.

Halfway up the airplane's stairs, over the whine of the still-cycling engines, Fred later said, he heard a guttural “inhuman” howling and wondered what it was. But when he stepped into the cabin cluttered with medical equipment, he found its source: Otto, strapped to a stretcher, jerking violently against his restraints and wailing.

Cindy was prepared for her son to be changed, but she had not expected this. Otto's arms and legs were “totally deformed,” according to his parents. His wavy brown locks had been buzzed off. A feeding tube infiltrated his nostrils. “It looked like someone had taken a pair of pliers and re-arranged his bottom teeth,” as Fred would say. According to Cindy, Otto's sister fled the plane, screaming, and Cindy ran after her.

Fred approached his son and hugged him. Otto's eyes remained wide open and blank. Fred told Otto that he had missed him and was overjoyed to have him home. But Otto's alien keening only continued, impossible to comfort.

By the time paramedics carried Otto out of the plane by his legs and armpits and loaded him into an ambulance, Cindy had recovered somewhat. She forced herself to join him in the emergency vehicle, though seeing him in such torment had almost made her pass out.

At the University of Cincinnati Medical Center, the family camped at Otto's bedside while speculation blazed around the world about what had rendered him vegetative. But Otto would never recover to tell his side of the story. And despite exhaustive examinations by doctors, no definitive medical evidence explaining how his injury came to be would ever emerge.

Instead, in the vacuum of fact, North Korea and the U.S. competed to provide a story. North Korea blamed Otto's condition on a combination of botulism and an unexpected reaction to a sleeping pill, an explanation that many American doctors said was unlikely. A senior American official asserted that, according to intelligence reports, Otto had been repeatedly beaten. Fred and Cindy declared on TV that their son had been physically tortured, in order to spotlight the dictatorship's evil. The president pushed this narrative. Meanwhile, the American military made preparations for a possible conflict. Otto became a symbol used to build “a case for war on emotional grounds,” the New York Times editorial board wrote.

As the Trump administration and North Korea spun Otto's story for their own ends, I spent six months reporting—from Washington, D.C., to Seoul—trying to figure out what had actually happened to him. What made an American college student go to Pyongyang? What kind of nightmare did he endure while in captivity? How did his brain damage occur? And how did his eventual death help push America closer toward war with North Korea and then, in a surprising reversal, help lead to Trump's peace summit with Kim Jong-un? The story I uncovered was stranger and sadder than anyone had known. In fact, I discovered that the manner of Otto's injury was not as black-and-white as people were encouraged to believe. But before he became a rallying cry in the administration's campaign against North Korea, he was just a kid. His name was Otto Warmbier.

Local residents held signs of support at the airport. They were likely unaware of Otto’s condition.

In a white two-story home flying the Stars and Stripes, Otto grew up the eldest child of a Republican family. He was one of those special young people we praise as all-American. At a top-ranked Ohio high school, he boasted the second-best grades. He was also a math whiz and a gifted soccer player and swimmer. And as if it weren't enough that he was prom king, his peers also anointed him with the plastic crown at homecoming.

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But despite running in the “popular circle given his athletic prowess, classic good looks and unending charisma,” a classmate later wrote in a local newspaper , he “still felt like everyone's friend.” Though his family was well-off, he had a passion for “memorabilia investing,” as he called thrift-store shopping, and sometimes dressed in secondhand Hawaiian shirts. When the time came for him to give a speech at his high school graduation, instead of orating grandiosely, he admitted to struggling to find words. He took as his theme a quote from The Office: “I wish there was a way to know you're in the good old days,” he told his peers, “before you've actually left them.”

Of course, Otto's best days seemed ahead: He attended the University of Virginia with a scholarship, intent on becoming a banker. A meticulous planner, he filled a calendar hung on his dorm wall with handwritten commitments: from assignments to dates to bringing differently abled friends to basketball games. He joined a fraternity known for its “kind of nerdy dudes,” and one of his college friends said that academics and family always took precedence over everything else, from partying to tailgating at football games. When he won a finance internship the fall of his junior year, there was no disputing that he was a man fully in charge of his destiny.

Knowing that he would soon be laboring over spreadsheets, he decided he wanted an adventure over his winter break. He had long been curious about other cultures and had previously visited intrepid destinations like Cuba. And since he would already be traveling to Hong Kong to study abroad, he decided he wanted to witness the world's most repressive nation: North Korea. Even though the state imprisons and sometimes executes citizens trying to flee it, it permits thousands of foreigners to visit every year on tightly controlled tours—one of the few ways its sanction-crippled economy makes cash. If Otto had Googled “tour North Korea,” the top link would have been for the company he chose, Young Pioneer Tours, an operator specializing in budget excursions to “destinations your mother would rather you stay away from.” The trips have a reputation of being like spring break in a geopolitical hot spot. After putting down a deposit for a $1,200 five-day, four-night “New Year's Party Tour,” Otto learned from the confirmation e-mail that his visa would be arranged by the company and presented to him when he met the tour group at the Beijing airport. The State Department had an advisory in place against traveling to North Korea, where he'd be beyond the American government's power to directly help him. Otto's parents weren't thrilled by the trip, but as his mother later explained, “Why would you say no to a kid like this?”

So, shortly after Christmas 2015, Otto met the other Young Pioneers in China and boarded an old Soviet jet to Pyongyang. In North Korea's capital, border police confiscated cameras and flicked through each file on smartphones to make sure no outsider was smuggling in subversive materials. Then Otto stepped through passport control—and just like that, left the free world.

Early on in Pyongyang, Otto and the other Young Pioneers were led aboard the U.S.S. Pueblo, an American Navy spy ship that had been seized by the North Koreans in 1968 and today serves as an odd tourist attraction. While they toured the ship, the Young Pioneers were regaled by a North Korean who told the foreign visitors about capturing the ship from the “imperial enemy.” The 82 American sailors captured on the Pueblo were beaten and starved for 11 months before finally being released. For Otto, the story made clear what he had perhaps overlooked before: that he was in enemy territory. Even though the Korean War had stalemated in 1953, the lack of a peace agreement meant that the North was technically still at war with the South and its ally, the U.S. Stepping from the boat, Otto “was a little bit shocked,” said Danny Gratton, an impish British 40-something greeting-card salesman who was his roommate for the tour.

But Gratton and the other tourists, a mix of Canadians, Australians, Europeans, and at least one other American, helped Otto laugh off that dark knowledge, nicknaming him “Imperial Enemy”—as in, “Hey, Imperial Enemy, want another beer?” Soon enough Otto was having fun again, for even though propaganda billboards showed North Korean missiles blasting the White House, the tour felt more like a bizarre charade than a visit to a hostile nation. The Young Pioneers visited the 70-foot bronze statues of the first two generations of the country's dictators, and they could never be sure if the citizens they saw spontaneously hailing the Great Leader were sincere or put up to it. Of course, everyone knew that outside the stage-managed capital lay starving villages and concentration camps. But Otto succeeded in bridging the cultural divide, laughing and throwing snowballs with North Korean children.

On New Year's Eve, the Young Pioneers went drinking at a fancy bar, though according to Gratton, no one got belligerently drunk, as some reports would later suggest. After the bar, Gratton says, they celebrated the final hours of New Year's Eve with thousands of North Koreans in Pyongyang's main square. The group then returned to their hotel, known as the “Alcatraz of Fun” because of its island location. To keep foreigners entertained, the 47-story tower is furnished with five restaurants (one of which revolves), a bar, a sauna, a massage parlor, and its own bowling alley. Some Young Pioneers headed to the bar. Gratton went bowling, and lost track of Otto. It was only later that he would wonder about “the two-hour window that none of us can account for [Otto].”

The restricted area in the Pyongyang hotel from which Otto allegedly removed a framed propaganda poster.

North Korea would later release grainy CCTV camera footage of an unidentifiable figure removing a framed propaganda poster from a wall in a restricted area of the hotel, claiming it was Otto. During the televised confession, Otto would read from a handwritten script that he had put on his “quietest boots, the best for sneaking” and attempted the theft at the prompting of a local Methodist church, a university secret society, and the American administration, “to harm the work ethic and motivation of the Korean people” and bring home a “trophy.” Many of the confession's details didn't square—for one, Otto was Jewish, not affiliated with a Methodist church—making experts suspect the words weren't originally Otto's. Whatever happened during those lost hours, when Gratton returned to his and Otto's room, around 4:30 A.M. on January 1, Otto was already snoozing.

The following morning at the airport, the two tired friends were the last Young Pioneers to present their passports, side by side at a single desk. After an uncomfortably long time, Gratton noticed that the officers were intently scrutinizing the documents. Then two soldiers marched up, and one tapped Otto on the shoulder. Gratton thought the authorities just wanted to give the Imperial Enemy a hard time, and jested, “Well, that's the last we'll ever see of you.”

Otto laughed, and then let himself be led away from Gratton through a wooden door beside the check-in area. Otto's control of his carefully planned life had just been wrenched from him.

Otto, escorted at the Supreme Court in Pyongyang, where he was sentenced to 15 years of prison with hard labor.

When Robert King went to work at the State Department on January 2, 2016, during the Obama administration, he was expecting a boring day churning through e-mails accumulated over the holidays. Instead, a red-alert situation confronted him. King's first thought was Oh no, not another American. During his seven years as the special envoy for North Korean human-rights issues, King had helped oversee the safe release of more than a dozen imprisoned Americans, so he knew what would happen. First, Otto would be forced to confess to undermining the regime, and tapes of that speech would be used as domestic propaganda to convince North Koreans that America sought to destroy them. Next, Otto was likely to be imprisoned and his freedom used as a bargaining chip by the North Koreans to extract a visit from a high-level American dignitary or concessions in nuclear or sanctions negotiations.

In meetings with the family, King warned the Warmbiers to expect “a marathon, not a sprint.” He also recommended they keep quiet to avoid antagonizing the unpredictable regime. He could offer them few reassurances, explaining, “We weren't 100 percent sure where [Otto] was or what had happened to him,” as America has scant intelligence assets in North Korea. The Warmbiers grew frustrated that the world's most powerful nation could not take more direct, immediate action to help their son.

But King had no leverage over Pyongyang. He couldn't even directly interface with North Korean officials because the two countries have never had a formal diplomatic relationship. In fact, the Swedish ambassador stands in as Washington's liaison for American citizens in Pyongyang. All King could do was wait for weeks while the Swedes' e-mails and calls were stonewalled.

But even if the official State Department response was stymied, that didn't mean that a back channel couldn't be employed. Shortly after Otto was arrested, Ohio governor John Kasich connected the Warmbiers with Bill Richardson, the affable former governor of New Mexico and ambassador to the United Nations, who was leading a foundation that specializes in under-the-radar “fringe diplomacy” to release hostages from hostile regimes or criminal organizations. Richardson had previously helped free several Americans from North Korea and consequently had a strong relationship with what is commonly called the New York Channel, the North Korean representatives at the United Nations headquarters in Manhattan, who often serve as unofficial go-betweens for Washington and Pyongyang.

Every few weeks from February 2016 to August 2016, Richardson or Mickey Bergman, his senior adviser, traveled to the city to meet the New York Channel. In restaurants, hotel lobbies, and coffee shops near the United Nations, they would hold polite negotiations with the regime's representatives. But shortly after Otto's conviction in Pyongyang, Richardson sensed that the previously communicative foreign ministry was having its information cut off by Kim Jong-un's obstinate inner circle—a transition, his team would later realize, that probably dated from Otto's injury. “They made it clear they could only convey our offers,” Richardson recalled. “They were not decision makers at all.”

Otto signed a document with a thumbprint during his appearance at the Supreme Court in Pyongyang in March 2016.*

To get real answers, someone would have to go to Pyongyang. So with the Obama White House's blessing, Richardson and Bergman negotiated a visit by promising to discuss private humanitarian aid for North Korean flood victims along with Otto's release. Bergman, a former Israeli paratrooper with a therapist's sensitive demeanor, was chosen as the emissary, as Richardson would draw too much attention.

In September, Bergman achieved what he described as the first face-to-face meeting between American and North Korean representatives in Pyongyang in nearly two years. Diplomatic missions to North Korea are different from those to other countries, in which meetings take place across oak tables. In Pyongyang, rather, Bergman was squired around for four days to many of the same sites that Otto had touristed—from the U.S.S. Pueblo to restaurants. But as he chatted with his guides, he knew his informal offers were being conveyed up the chain. By the time Bergman sat down with a vice minister on his last day, he was expecting a positive outcome because of the excitement of his minders. But Bergman was told he wouldn't even get to see Otto. Still, afterward, his handlers reminded him, “It takes 100 hacks to take down a tree.”

Bergman said he hoped he would not have to travel to Pyongyang 99 more times.

Bergman left with the impression that the North Koreans were considering ways that Otto could be released, but first they wanted to see what happened with the climaxing 2016 presidential campaign.

When Trump won, Bergman and Richardson recognized a golden opportunity to free Otto à la the release of American hostages in Iran at the beginning of Ronald Reagan's inaugural presidential term. The two fringe diplomats put together a photo-op-worthy proposal for the Trump plane to pick Otto up in advance of the inauguration, before bureaucracy hemmed in the new president. They didn't receive a no from North Korea, which they knew from past diplomacy with them was often a signal of positive interest. “The challenge that we had was that we could not get Donald Trump,” Bergman said. “We tried to go through Giuliani, Pence, Ivanka. Nothing during the transition. I'm assuming they were in chaos over there. I don't think it ever crossed his desk, because I think he would have actually liked it.”

Vice President Mike Pence and Fred Warmbier drew attention to Otto’s death at the Winter Olympics in South Korea.

After the election, as Robert King transitioned into retirement, Otto's case was taken up by the newly appointed U.S. special representative for North Korea policy, Joseph Yun. When Yun came in, Pyongyang was still refusing to speak to the Obama administration, but shortly after the day of Trump's inauguration, the mild-mannered but steely former ambassador established contact with the New York Channel about releasing Otto. By February 2017, a delegation of North Koreans was set to visit the States, but then Kim Jong-un orchestrated the assassination of his half brother with a chemical weapon in an international airport, which drew condemnation from America, scuttling the talks.

“Listening to [Trump] deliberate on this,” said a State Department official, “he sounded to me a lot more like a dad.”

By April, however, relations had thawed to the point that Yun was able to persuade Secretary Tillerson to let him discuss freeing Otto face-to-face with senior North Korean officials, as long as no broader diplomacy was done. So Yun traveled to Norway to meet several high-level North Korean officials on the sidelines of secret nuclear negotiations, conducted by retired diplomats to get around the lack of official contact. Yun and the North Koreans agreed that the Swedish ambassador could visit Otto and the three other Americans who were detained in North Korea. In the end, the proxy was reportedly allowed to see only one detainee—but not Otto.

Yun continued to demand access to Otto, and one day in early June he was surprised by a call urgently requesting him to meet with the New York Channel. In Manhattan, the North Koreans informed Yun that Otto was unconscious. “I was completely shocked,” Yun said. He argued that given the young man's health, Pyongyang had to free him promptly on humanitarian grounds. “I came back immediately, and I told Secretary Tillerson,” Yun said. “And we determined at the time that we needed to get him and the other prisoners out as soon as possible, and I should contact Pyongyang and say I wanted to come right away.”

When Trump learned of Otto's condition, he doubled down on the order for Yun to rush to Pyongyang and bring Otto home. The North Koreans were unilaterally informed that an American plane would soon land in Pyongyang and that United States diplomats and doctors would get off. “The president was very invested in bringing Otto home,” said a State Department official who was involved in the case and who was not authorized to speak on the record. “Listening to him deliberate on this, he sounded to me a lot more like a dad.” But, the official said, “we were very scared,” for though the North Koreans eventually said the plane would be able to land, no one knew what kind of welcome the Americans would receive on the ground. Yun explained, “The North Koreans said we could send a delegation to see Otto, but that we would have to discuss some of the conditions of getting him out once we got there.” And so Yun raced to assemble a diplomatic and medical team to save Otto.

Michael Flueckiger was used to calmly fixing horrifying situations, having previously saved countless patients from gunshot wounds and car crashes during 31 years as a trauma-center doctor. He was also no stranger to dangerous overseas situations, for in his current position as medical director for an elite air-ambulance service, Phoenix Air, he had evacuated Americans stricken with Ebola from Africa. When his boss called to ask if he would help rescue Otto from North Korea, he briefly hesitated from fear, but he decided he couldn't ask any of his employees to go in his stead. Once committed, the challenge-seeking, mountain-biking 67-year-old began excitedly awaiting the mission.

The final go-ahead from the State Department arrived during an inconspicuous Friday lunch. Phoenix Air immediately rerouted its best aircraft—a luxury Gulfstream G-III jet upgraded into a flying E.R.—from Senegal to its headquarters, outside Atlanta, where Flueckiger and his team got it loaded and airborne again in less than two hours on Saturday. Then they picked up Yun and two other members of the State Department in Washington, D.C., and flew to Japan. There they off-loaded everyone but Yun, one other diplomat, and Flueckiger—for only those three had been authorized to enter North Korea. The next day, as the Gulfstream rocketed toward the edge of North Korean airspace, all the Japanese air-traffic controllers could do was aim the plane at Pyongyang and tell the pilot to proceed straight for 20 miles, as there is no official flight path between the countries. Then the radio chatter faded out, and only static filled the airwaves for ten minutes. Finally, a voice speaking perfect English guided the plane's landing in Pyongyang. A busload of soldiers escorted the Americans off the tarmac, and the aircraft returned to Japan.

The Americans were chauffeured through the farmland outside Pyongyang to an opulent guesthouse complete with marble staircases, chandeliers, and a full staff, even though they appeared to be the only guests. That day, Yun engaged in several rounds of intense negotiations with North Korean officials, trying to win Otto's freedom. However, Yun kept butting his head against the North Koreans' argument: Otto committed this crime, so why should he escape due process? In North Korea, disrespecting one of the ubiquitous propaganda posters is actually a serious breach of the law. The research organization Database Center for North Korean Human Rights confirmed a case of a factory janitor being prosecuted for bumping such a picture off the wall so that it fell and broke. As Andrei Lankov, director of the Korea Risk Group, said, if a North Korean did what Otto did, “they would be dead or definitely tortured.”

Finally, Yun persuaded the North Koreans to let him see Otto. Flueckiger and Yun were shuttled to Friendship Hospital, a private facility that often treats foreign diplomats living in Pyongyang. In an isolated second-floor ICU room, Flueckiger was presented with a pale, inert man with a feeding tube threaded through his nostrils. Could this really be Otto? Flueckiger wondered, for the body looked so different from the pictures he had seen of the homecoming king.

Flueckiger clapped beside Otto's ear. No meaningful response. Sadness flooded him. He had two children and struggled to imagine one in such a state. Yun, too, couldn't help but think of his own son, around Otto's age, and about how the Warmbiers would feel when they saw their boy.

Two North Korean doctors explained that Otto had arrived at the hospital this way more than a year before and showed as proof thick handwritten charts and several brain scans that revealed Otto had suffered extensive brain damage. Flueckiger spent about an hour examining Otto, but the truth had been evident at first sight: The Otto of old was already gone. Though he had obviously improved since coming into the hospital (he had a tracheotomy scar where machines had once breathed for him), he was in a state of unresponsive wakefulness, meaning he still possessed basic reflexes but no longer showed signs of awareness.

The North Koreans asked Flueckiger to sign a report testifying that Otto had been well cared for in the hospital. “I would have been willing to fudge that report if I thought it would get Otto released,” Flueckiger said. “But as it turned out,” despite the most basic facilities (the room's sink did not even work), “he got good care, and I didn't have to lie.” Otto was well nourished and had no bedsores, an accomplishment even Western hospitals struggle to achieve with comatose patients. But the North Koreans were still not ready to release Otto.

Negotiations continued into the night. Then, the next morning, Flueckiger and Yun were driven to a hotel in downtown Pyongyang, where the three other American prisoners were marched into a conference room one by one. The three Korean-Americans, all detained on charges of espionage or “hostile acts against the state,” had had almost no contact with the outside world since being arrested, and they all cried as they dictated messages for their families to Yun. After only 15 minutes, though, each prisoner was escorted away. “I was, frankly, disappointed we didn't get the others out,” Yun said. “It was very hard to leave them behind.”

Once they got back to the guesthouse, Yun found himself once more arguing with North Korean officials for Otto's freedom. Then Yun played his last card: “I called my guys to bring the plane from Japan. I told the North Koreans we would leave with or without Otto. I felt there was no point in dragging on. I was 90 percent sure they would release him, and that this call would bring an action forcing them to do so.”

Shortly before the plane was to land, a North Korean official announced to Yun that they had decided to release Otto. The Americans returned to the hospital, and a North Korean judge in a black suit commuted Otto's sentence. Then the U.S. motorcade and the ambulance raced directly to the airport, through open security gates, and onto the tarmac where the Gulfstream waited. When the plane cleared North Korean airspace, the celebration was muted. The team knew they would soon have to face the heartbreak of turning Otto over to his parents. In the meantime, Flueckiger cradled Otto, changed his diaper, and whispered to him that he was free, like a father soothing his baby.

Two days after the return, Fred Warmbier took the stage at Otto's high school. He was draped in the linen blazer that his son had worn during his forced confession. Tears spangled his eyes as he said to the assembled reporters, “Otto, I love you, and I'm so crazy about you, and I'm so glad you're home.” He blamed the Obama administration for failing to win Otto's release sooner, and thanked Trump. When asked about his son's health, he said grimly, “We're trying to make him comfortable.” Sometimes he slipped into the past tense when talking about him.

From the start, Fred had striven relentlessly for Otto's freedom with the same streetwise entrepreneurism he had used to eventually build a major metal-finishing business after going to work straight out of high school. He traveled to Washington more than a dozen times in 2016 to meet with Secretary of State John Kerry and other high-level politicians. But after a fruitless year of bowing to the Obama administration's admonitions to work behind the scenes, he decided that “the era of strategic patience for the Warmbier family [was] over.” Early in Trump's presidency, Fred appeared on Fox News, reportedly because he knew that the president obsessively watched the network, to complain that the State Department wasn't doing enough for his son. “President Trump, I ask you: Bring my son home,” he said. “You can make a difference here.” Soon the administration had raised Otto's case into a signature issue.

When Otto was returned in a vegetative state, Fred refocused his zeal on getting justice for him. To Fred, the evidence of torture seemed clear. The once vital young man was severely brain-damaged. His formerly straight teeth were misaligned, and a large scar marred his foot. Doctors detected no signs of botulism, North Korea's explanation. And The New York Times had written that the government had “obtained intelligence reports in recent weeks indicating that Mr. Warmbier had been repeatedly beaten while in North Korean custody,” citing an anonymous senior American official.

Within 48 hours of his return, Otto had a fever that had risen to 104 degrees. After doctors confirmed to Fred and Cindy that their son would never be cognizant again, they directed that his feeding tube be removed. They lived at his bedside until, six days after returning home, Otto died.

Hundreds of people lined the streets to witness Otto's hearse, and many made the W hand gesture representing his high school. Wearing an American-flag tie, Fred watched his son “complete his journey home” with a haggard stare.

After a mourning period, Fred and Cindy appeared on Fox & Friends in September 2017, once more reportedly seeking to catch the president's eye, and called the North Koreans “terrorists” who had “intentionally injured” Otto. Fred graphically described damage to Otto's teeth and foot as the result of torture and demanded that the administration punish the dictatorship. Shortly afterward, the president showed his approval by tweeting “great interview” and noting that Otto was “tortured beyond belief by North Korea.” To lobby for the United States to take legal action against North Korea, Fred hired the lawyer who represents Vice President Mike Pence in the special counsel's Russia investigation. In early November, Congress backed banking restrictions against North Korea that were named for Otto. And later that month, Trump designated North Korea as a state sponsor of terrorism, which would allow harsher future sanctions, stating, “As we take this action today, our thoughts turn to Otto Warmbier.”

“Being imprisoned was lonely, isolating, and frustrating,” Kenneth Bae, an American who’d been detained in North Korea, told me. “I was on trial for all of America.”

Around the same time as Otto's death, U.S. hostilities with North Korea were growing heated. This was the period of “fire and fury,” and of Trump and Kim comparing who had the “bigger & more powerful” nuclear buttons. Behind the scenes in Washington, dovish diplomats, like Joseph Yun, were replaced by hawks, like John Bolton, one of the architects of the Iraq war. The likelihood of conflict grew so real that an American diplomat warned a Seoul-dwelling friend in confidence to move his assets out of South Korea.

On TV and social media, and in official speeches, Republican officials cited Otto's death as a reason Kim Jong-un needed to be confronted. When making a case for a forceful response against North Korea to the South Korean National Assembly, in November 2017, Trump said their common enemy had “tortured Otto Warmbier, ultimately leading to that fine young man's death.” In his January 2018 State of the Union address, Trump pledged to keep “maximum pressure” on North Korea and to “honor Otto's memory with total American resolve,” while the Warmbiers wept in the gallery. Meanwhile, Fred and Cindy traveled the country reinforcing the narrative that Otto was tortured. As Cindy told the United Nations in New York City, “I can't let Otto die in vain.” In April 2018, the Warmbiers, seeking damages, filed a lawsuit alleging that North Korea “brutally tortured and murdered” their son.

Despite how Trump and his administration boosted the narrative that Otto was physically tortured, however, the evidence was not clear-cut. The day after the Warmbiers went on national television to declare that Otto had been “systematically tortured and intentionally injured,” a coroner who had examined Otto, Dr. Lakshmi Kode Sammarco, unexpectedly called a press conference. She explained that she hadn't previously done so out of respect for the Warmbiers. But her findings, and those of the doctors who had attended Otto, contradicted the Warmbiers' assertions.

Fred had described Otto's teeth as having been “re-arranged” with pliers, but Sammarco reiterated that the postmortem exam found that “the teeth [were] natural and in good repair.” She discovered no significant scars, dismissing the one on his foot as not definitively indicative of anything. Other signs of physical trauma were also lacking. Both sides of Otto's brain had suffered simultaneously, meaning it had been starved of oxygen. (Blows to the head would have likely resulted in asymmetrical, rather than universal, damage.) Though the Warmbiers declined a surgical autopsy, non-invasive scans found no hairline bone fractures or other evidence of prior trauma. “His body was in excellent condition,” Sammarco said. “I'm sure he had to have round-the-clock care to be able to maintain the skin in the condition it was in.” When asked about the Warmbiers' claims, Sammarco answered, “They're grieving parents. I can't really make comments on what they said or their perceptions. But here in this office, we depend on science for our conclusions.” Three other individuals who had close contact with Otto on his return also did not notice any physical signs consistent with torture.

The origin of Otto's injury remained a mystery. “We're never going to know,” Sammarco said, “unless the people who were there at the time it happened would come forward and say, ‘This is what happened.’ ”

Discovering the truth of events that happen in North Korea is a task that even American intelligence agencies struggle with. But Otto's experience after his arrest is not a black hole, as it has often been portrayed. Through intelligence sources, government officials, and senior-level North Korean defectors, and drawing on the experiences of the 15 other Americans who since 1996 have been imprisoned in North Korea—some in the same places as Otto—it is possible to describe Otto's probable day-to-day life there.

Within the electrified fences of many of North Korea's notorious prison camps dwell up to 120,000 souls, condemned for infractions as minor as watching banned South Korean soap operas. The human-rights abuses within have been extensively documented, creating a compelling case that they are among the worst places in the world. The lucky survive on starvation rations while enduring routine beatings and dangerous enforced labor, like coal mining. The unlucky are tortured to death. In Seoul, one North Korean, who had endured three years at a low-level camp for trying to flee the country, wept as she told me: “North Korean prisons are actually hell. We had less rights than a dog. They often beat us, and we were so hungry we would catch mice in our cells to eat.” She saw six to eight fellow prisoners die every day.

But American detainees escape that fate. When Otto finally opened his eyes again, he likely found himself at a guesthouse, which is where the State Department believed he was probably kept. At least five previous American detainees have been imprisoned in a two-story building with a green-tiled roof in a gated alleyway behind a restaurant in downtown Pyongyang, which is run by the State Security Department, the North Korean secret police. (Others have been kept at a different guesthouse, and at least three have stayed at a hotel.) The most used guesthouse is luxurious by local standards—detainees can hear guards using its karaoke machine into the wee hours—but Otto would have likely found its two-room suites roughly equivalent to those in a basic hotel. And no matter how nice his suite, it was also a cell, for he would have been allowed out only for an occasional escorted walk.

For the next two months, until his forced confession, Otto would probably have been relentlessly interrogated; American missionary Kenneth Bae said he was questioned up to 15 hours a day. The goal wasn't to extract the truth but to construct the fabulation that Otto read off handwritten notes at his news conference. In the past, North Korea has spun false confessions from small truths, and in this case they may have construed a conspiracy from a souvenir propaganda poster that Otto had bought, according to Danny Gratton, Otto's tour roommate. No previous American detainee has accused North Korea of using physical force to extract a confession, but if Otto protested his innocence, he probably received a warning similar to the one given to Ohioan Jeffrey Fowle, who was detained two years before him: “If you don't start cooperating, things are going to become less pleasant.” As the journalist Laura Ling wrote of her five months in detention, “I told [the prosecutor] what he wanted to hear—and kept telling him until he was satisfied.”

Ever since the sailors of the U.S.S. Pueblo were beaten in 1968, there have been no clear-cut cases of North Korea physically torturing American prisoners. When Ling and fellow journalist Euna Lee sneaked over the North Korean border, Ling was struck as soldiers detained them. But once their nationalities were established, they were sent to the green-roofed guesthouse. American media, including The New York Times, have widely repeated the claims that missionary Robert Park was physically tortured, but Park himself has reportedly said that the story that he was stripped naked by female guards and clubbed in the genitals was fabricated by a journalist. On the contrary, the North Koreans have carefully tended to the health of Americans they have captured, caring for them, if needed, in the Friendship Hospital where Otto was kept; 85-year-old detainee Merrill Newman was reportedly visited by a doctor and nurse four times a day. As a high-level North Korean defector who now works for a South Korean intelligence agency said, “North Korea treats its foreign prisoners especially well. They know someday they will have to send them back.”

But that doesn't mean that North Korea doesn't psychologically torture detained Americans—in fact, it has always tried to bludgeon them into mental submission. Bae, Ling, and other prisoners were repeatedly told that their government had “forgotten” them and were given so little hope that they only learned of their impending freedom an hour before being released. When I met former detainee Bae in the Seoul office of his NGO dedicated to helping North Korean defectors, he told me, “Being imprisoned was lonely, isolating, and frustrating. I was on trial for all of America, so I had to accept that I had no control and there was no way I could get out of the impending punishment.” While some previous detainees were allowed letters from home, it seems that North Korea denied Otto any contact with the outside world. His only break from the interrogations was likely watching North Korean propaganda films. The psychic trauma of all this has sent previous detainees into crushing depressions, and even driven some to attempt suicide.

In the footage of his news-conference confession, Otto looked physically healthy, but as he sobbed for his freedom, he was obviously in extreme mental distress. Two weeks later, in mid-March, as Otto was filmed after being sentenced to 15 years of hard labor, his body still looked whole, but his expression was vacant and he had to be supported by two guards as he was dragged out of the courthouse—as if the life had drained out of him.

Until now, the next assumption about Otto's fate was that he had suffered severe brain damage by “April,” as the first brain scan sent back with his body was time-stamped. Speculation suggested that the tragedy might have occurred at a special labor camp for foreigners, where at least three Americans have performed their hard-labor sentences. There they were forced to plant soybeans or make bricks while living in spartan conditions, though, as Bae wrote, “Compared to the average North Korean serving time in a labor camp, I was in a four-star resort.” Certainly, it would have been more likely for any type of tragedy—over-exertion under a furnace sun, a work accident, or even directed beatings—to occur in that barbed-wire-enclosed valley a few miles outside Pyongyang. But Otto almost certainly never made it to the labor camp.

“The staff at Friendship Hospital said they received Otto the morning after the trial and that when he came in he was unresponsive,” Dr. Flueckiger told me. “They had to resuscitate him, then give him oxygen and put him on a ventilator, or he would die.” As Yun, the negotiator who helped free Otto, said, “The doctors were clear that he had been brought to the hospital within a day of his trial, and that he had been in that same room until I saw him.”

The previously unreported detail of when Otto was admitted to the Friendship Hospital changes the narrative of what could have happened to him. If Otto was “repeatedly beaten,” as the intel reports suggested, it would logically have been during the two to six weeks between his sentencing, when videos of him showed no signs of physical damage, and “April,” as the North Korean brain scan was dated. But Otto was apparently unconscious by the next morning. The coroner found no evidence of bludgeoning on Otto's body. And when one takes into account that the entire sourced public case that Otto was beaten derives from that single anonymous official who spoke to The New York Times, the theory begins to crack.

It is for this paucity of evidence that, though the public discourse about Otto's death has long been dominated by talk of beatings, there have been doubts among North Korea experts that the intelligence reports were correct. Of the dozen experts I spoke to, only a single one thought there was even a remote likelihood that he had been beaten. “I don't believe Otto was physically tortured,” Andrei Lankov said in his office in Seoul. “The campaign to make Otto a symbol of North Korea's cruelty was psychological preparation to justify military operations.”

Many experts pointed out that though North Korea is often portrayed as irrational, the Kim family had to be “both brutal and smart,” as Lankov said, to maintain its relative power on the world stage, especially for such a small, impoverished country. What incentive would they have to lose a valuable bargaining chip, especially when they had never been so thoughtless before? To these experts, it made much more sense that Otto was treated like all other detained Americans and that an unexpected catastrophe occurred. But despite the experts' doubts, none of them could disprove the intelligence reports indicating that Otto had been beaten.

However, a senior-level American official who reviewed the reports told me, “In general, the intel reports were wrong, as the medical examinations have shown. They were apparently not even correct about where Otto was or when he was beaten, for God's sake. Likely, the reports were just hearsay. Someone heard third- or fourth-hand that Otto was sick, and that person decided he was beaten. The North Koreans have never tortured a white guy physically. Never.” The official said he did not know of the Trump administration having other sources of information about Otto being beaten.

Another senior government official told me, “I can tell you that I've been in a lot of classified meetings about Otto, before and after his return. Beforehand, I heard some reporting that he was beaten, but it wasn't from State or Intel, who never corroborated that, before or after the fact. But it's possible that there was intel I did not see.”

A congressional staffer familiar with the intelligence reports said, “Before we had Otto back in the United States, we just didn't know what was going on there. In the end, there was no definitive evidence whether or not he was beaten.” The staffer claimed that the government never got further intelligence reports indicating Otto was beaten.

Three days after the Times published its claims, The Washington Post also cited an anonymous senior American official rejecting reports that Otto had been beaten in custody. South Korean intelligence, generally considered the spy agency with the best sources in North Korea, found no confirmation that Otto was beaten.

But if Otto was almost certainly not “repeatedly beaten,” then what put him in a state of non-responsive wakefulness? And why would the Trump administration allow these unverified rumors to flourish?

Without knowing about the revised time line of Otto's injury, experts I spoke to overwhelmingly identified some kind of accident—for example, an allergic reaction—as the most likely cause for Otto's unconsciousness. The likelihood that his brain damage happened immediately after the sentencing, however, raises the possibility that he may have attempted suicide.

Imagine what Otto must have been feeling after hearing that he would spend the next 15 years laboring in what he probably imagined to be a gulag. After two months of being constantly reminded that the American government couldn't help him, he probably felt that his family, his beautiful girlfriend (who called him her “soul mate”), and his Wall Street future were all lost. What else could he look forward to but physical and mental suffering?

At least two Americans imprisoned in North Korea have attempted suicide. After failing to cut his wrists, Aijalon Gomes chewed open a thermometer and drank its mercury, later explaining that he had given up on America's ability to free him. Despite eventually having his release won by Jimmy Carter, Gomes was unable to escape his post-traumatic stress disorder, and seven years later burned himself to death. An American official said that Evan Hunziker tried to kill himself while being held, and less than a month after returning home, he shattered his own skull with a bullet in a run-down hotel. Robert Park reportedly tried to take his own life on returning.

Even if North Korea didn't beat Otto, that doesn't mean that he wasn't tortured, as the mental suffering the regime inflicted on him constitutes torture under the U.N. definition. As Tomás Ojea Quintana, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on human rights for North Korea, said, “Otto's rights were violated on every level.”

The first that Governor Richardson, the back-channel negotiator, heard of Otto's injury was upon the young man's release, and he was furious at having been deceived by Pyongyang. But a North Korean ambassador soon contacted Richardson to explain that he had not meant to lead him astray in negotiations and that he too had been kept in the dark. “I believed him,” Richardson told me. “In the 15 years I've been negotiating with him, he's always been honest.” Senator Portman and sources working inside North Korea at the time also stressed that the foreign ministry didn't know. The minister who was responsible for Otto was demoted and eventually disappeared, according to Michael Madden, a North Korea analyst who tracks its leadership. Even the guards on whose watch Otto was injured were likely sent to prison. All of which means that the full truth of what transpired is likely hoarded only by Kim Jong-un and his most trusted lieutenants, and that it may never get out.

For all the unknowns, one certainty is that the Trump administration allowed the narrative that Otto was repeatedly beaten to spread, long after it was clear those intelligence reports were almost certainly wrong. That the reports suggested that he was beaten repeatedly when there was not time for that showed they were unreliable. The lack of physical evidence of beatings was widely publicized. The administration was informed of the correct time line, and it was well known among government officials who worked on the case. And both the senior-level American officials and the congressional staffer confirmed that the government never shared with them definitive evidence that Otto was beaten.

Now, that's not to fault the Trump administration for applying maximum pressure on North Korea for an American citizen ending up brain-damaged in its custody: Such behavior warrants punishment. Nor is it to imply that the senior government official lied to The New York Times about the intelligence reports, as some analysts suggested to me; that person seems to have correctly described them. But if the maverick boldness that the administration displayed in rescuing Otto represents the best of Trumpism, what followed once it was clear the reports were flawed encapsulates its troubling disregard for facts when a dubious narrative supports its interests.

It's impossible to say whether or not Trump had seen or parsed the nuances of the intelligence reports before he tweeted about Fred Warmbier's Fox interview, supporting that Otto had been physically tortured. Or when he declared, before the South Korean National Assembly, that Otto had been “tortured.” Perhaps those were just two more of the 3,001 false or misleading claims he advanced in his first 466 days in office, according to The Washington Post 's Fact Checker database. Or maybe it was a conscious strategy. Whatever it was, the misrepresentation helped push the U.S. closer to war with North Korea than it had ever been. Though soon, of course, the administration would choose a different path.

When Fred hugged Otto that first night in the air ambulance, he felt that he couldn't get through to him and that his son was “very uncomfortable—almost anguished.” But “within a day, the countenance of his face changed,” the Warmbiers said. Though there was no way that Otto could communicate with them, they wrote, “he was home, and we believe he could sense that.” Otto, they said, was finally “at peace.”

We tell stories so that we can make sense of irresolvable unknowns and then act. While no one can prove what happened to Otto in those final few hours, as Trump encouraged the narrative that Otto was beaten and the White House allowed speculation about possible beatings to spread, the administration gave people license to indulge their worst fears about Otto's fate and act accordingly.

In doing so, the Trump administration may have fostered misperceptions in the Warmbier family itself. During the year after highlighting the story that Otto was physically tortured, Trump praised Fred and Cindy as “good friends” and invited them to high-profile events. But Fred indicated on national television in September 2017 that he had no more knowledge of his son's case than that put out by the news media. In the lawsuit the Warmbiers filed in April against North Korea for Otto's death, they continued to assert evidence that he was repeatedly beaten. If they entertain the belief that their son's last conscious moments were spent in fear and physical agony as he was assaulted, that may be the result of the administration's unwillingness to acknowledge a different version of events, one that the facts support. But whatever they believe, what is clear is that they are loving parents, dealing with an unimaginably tragic loss, who have been striving to honor Otto's legacy.

When presented with the findings of this article, the Trump administration declined to comment.

Upon learning that this article did not support claims that Otto was beaten, and included the theory that he may have attempted suicide—a possibility that the family, through their lawyer, dismissed categorically—the Warmbiers withdrew a statement that they had previously provided. Ultimately, they declined to comment for this story.

In the absence of proof, we all have to choose what we want to believe about Otto's tragedy. And in this political age, where truth seems enslaved to the agendas of the powerful, it is important to consider what story we believe and why. After all, the stories we tell ourselves and others shape our own fates, and those of nations, the world, and other people's children.

In the end, however, despite all the mystery still surrounding Otto, it is essential to remember two facts that endure as unyielding as gravestones: Otto's death and the grief of those he left behind.

Fred Warmbier came face-to-face with those responsible for Otto's death at the Winter Olympics in South Korea. Since the beginning of 2018, North Korea, hamstrung by sanctions and spooked by full-on preparations for war in Otto's name, had been trying to reset relations with the outside world. The centerpiece of this diplomacy was a “charm offensive” at the February Games—deploying squads of cherubic cheerleaders singing folk songs about re-unification, and Kim Jong-un's smiley sister shaking hands with world leaders. The North Koreans even reportedly reached out to ask if Vice President Pence wanted to meet her, while warning him not to highlight Otto's story. Instead, Pence invited Fred Warmbier to sit with him in the VIP box at the opening ceremony, not ten feet from Kim's sister. Fred barely even looked at her as he sat in grieving dignity, his sorrow rebuking her serene ambassadorial smirk.

His personal life is in shambles, Robert Mueller looms large, and it's never been trickier to be the president's son.

By Julia Ioffe

In March, two top-level South Korean officials traveled to Pyongyang, where they feasted and drank traditional Korean liquor for four hours with Kim Jong-un, after which they were given a special message to deliver to Trump. The South Koreans rushed to Washington. On hearing the offer, and before consulting any of his advisers, the president accepted. Then one of the South Koreans informed the world from the White House driveway that the two leaders would try to resolve their nations' never-ended war in person.

From that point on, the White House no longer focused on Otto's tragedy. In fact, it swung so far in the opposite direction that civil-rights groups complained about human-rights issues not being on the agenda for the summit in Singapore. When the three remaining American detainees were released in May, Trump welcomed them home by saying, “We want to thank Kim Jong-un, who really was excellent to these three incredible people.”

The story of Otto being brutally beaten had outlived its usefulness.

In early June, Trump and Kim shook hands in front of the red, white, and blue of both nations' flags. In a private meeting, Trump showed Kim a Hollywood-trailer-like video that laid out the choice between economic prosperity, if he gave up his nukes, or war. Then they signed a largely symbolic document after North Korea promised to denuclearize and America swore to not invade, though there were no enforcement mechanisms in the document.

At Trump's post-summit news conference, the first question a reporter asked was why the president had been praising Kim, as the dictator had been responsible for Otto's death.

“Otto Warmbier is a very special person,” Trump answered. “I think, without Otto, this would not have happened.” Then he said twice, as if it was doubly true or he was trying to convince himself: “Otto did not die in vain.”

Doug Bock Clark wrote about the assassination of Kim Jong-un's brother in the October 2017 issue. His first book, ‘The Last Whalers,’ comes out next year.

This story originally appeared in the August 2018 issue with the title "American Hostage: The Untold Story of Otto Warmbier."

* A previous version of the caption misidentified the action being taken by Otto Warmbier. He is signing a document with a thumbprint, not having his fingerprints taken.

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Tour firm used by Otto Warmbier stops taking US citizens to North Korea

Young Pioneer Tours says risk is too high after 22-year-old student died on his return from imprisonment in the secretive state

The travel agency that arranged Otto Warmbier’s trip to North Korea has said it will no longer be taking US citizens to the secretive state after he was returned to the US in a coma and later died in hospital.

Warmbier, a 22-year-old American student, was travelling with the China-based agent Young Pioneer Tours when he was arrested at Pyongyang airport in January 2016 and sentenced to 15 years hard labour after allegedly stealing a propaganda poster from his hotel.

Warmbier was medically evacuated to the US last week after a flurry of secret diplomatic negotiations between Washington and Pyongyang but died on Monday . His parents said he had severe brain injuries after being brutalised in detention.

Warmbier’s father, Fred, has accused the tour company – which advertised North Korea as “probably one of the safest places on Earth to visit” – of “luring” his adventure-seeking son on to the trip and downplaying the risks .

In a statement on its website, the company offered its sympathies to Warmbier’s family and said the “assessment of risk for Americans visiting North Korea has become too high”.

Tour companies Koryo Tours and Uri Tours , which have been running trips to North Korea since the 1990s, also said they were reviewing their positions on taking US citizens to the country.

While the US state department strongly advises against travelling to North Korea, tour company websites say they regularly take people without incident, marketing a range of experiences from the Pyongyang Marathon, to surfing, cycling and beer tours around the capital.

A few days before Warmbier’s death, the US secretary of state, Rex Tillerson, said he was considering further restrictions on travel for American citizens, possibly an all-out ban. Of the estimated 5,000 western tourists who visit the secretive state every year, 20% are estimated to be American.

Young Pioneer Tours, which also promotes tours to Eritrea and Yemen , is based in the Chinese city of Xi’an. It was founded in 2008 by British expat Gareth Johnson, promising to take adventurous travellers to “the places your mother wants you to stay away from”, including North Korea and Iran.Proponents of tourism to North Korea argue that interaction with the outside world, no matter how stage-managed by the regime, is vital if the country is to open up. Benjamin Young, an American who runs a blog on North Korea, said the Warmbier case shows the country cannot be changed through tourism. Writing for NK news, he said: “You cannot truly engage with the North Korean people. You can only engage with the regime … who simply operate on a different level.”

Young, who travelled to North Korea as a student, added: “I thought I was being adventurous … looking back on it, I was just naive.

Adam Pitt, a British tourist who travelled with Young Pioneer in 2013, told Agence France-Presse that he was given little warning about the risks and described a “lewd”, “binge-drinking” culture on the trip similar to what one might expect in Europe.

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National news | gung-ho culture at tour agency warmbier used on north korea trip.

Since 2008, the Young Pioneer Tours agency built up a business attracting young travelers with a competitively priced catalog of exotic-sounding, hard-partying adventures in one of the world’s most isolated countries.

But the death last week of 22-year-old American student Otto Warmbier, who was arrested during a Young Pioneer tour to North Korea in late 2015 and fell into a coma in prison, has renewed questions about whether the company was adequately prepared for its trips into the hard-line communist state.

Although many details of Warmbier’s fateful trip remain unknown, interviews with past Young Pioneer customers or those who have crossed paths with the tour operator describe a company with occasional lapses in organization, a gung-ho drinking culture and a cavalier attitude that has long raised red flags among industry peers and North Korea watchers.

Founded in 2008 by Briton Gareth Johnson in the central Chinese city of Xi’an, Young Pioneer’s fun and casual style was seen precisely as its calling card, a counterpoint to North Korea’s reputation as an inaccessible, draconian hermit kingdom. “Budget tours to destinations your mother would rather you stayed away from,” its website touts, while describing North Korea as one of the safest places on Earth.

But in travel circles in Beijing, the staging point for trips into North Korea, Young Pioneer Tours, also known as YPT, has been associated with a string of cautionary tales, including of the tourist who performed a handstand outside the most politically sensitive mausoleum in Pyongyang where two generations of the Kim family are buried, resulting in a North Korean guide losing her job. During another tour, Johnson attempted to step off a moving train after drinking and broke his ankle, leading to an unexpected stay at a Pyongyang hospital.

Adam Pitt, a 33-year old British expatriate who formerly lived in Beijing and went on a 2013 trip, described to the AP a party atmosphere led by Johnson, who was often heavily inebriated and “almost unable to stand and barely understandable when he did speak” at a tense border crossing where he needed to hand wads of cash to officials as bribes.

While it’s expected for tourists to relax and enjoy a few drinks while traveling, tour operators and tourists say YPT has long stood out for its party-hearty tour groups. In respective interviews with Fairfax Media and the Independent newspaper, Nick Calder, a New Zealander, and Darragh O Tuathail, an Irish tourist, both recalled the YPT group Warmbier traveled with carousing until early morning. O Tuathail declined to discuss his recollections of the trip with the AP, saying he wanted to let Warmbier’s family grieve in peace.

In an emotional news conference last week, Fred Warmbier, Otto’s father, lashed out at tour agencies that “advertise slick ads on the internet proclaiming, ‘No American ever gets detained on our tours’ and ‘This is a safe place to go.'”

Earlier this week, YPT issued a statement saying it would no longer accept American customers because “the assessment of risk for Americans visiting North Korea has become too high.”

Pitt, who is Mormon and does not drink, said the company’s statement appeared to shift blame onto tourists rather than examining its own laissez-faire culture.

“It’s not about who goes, it’s about how their groups behave that causes problems,” said Pitt.

YPT co-owner Rowan Beard said most reviewers have attested to the company’s professionalism and preparation.

“Frankly everyone has different perceptions on things like drinking and what concerns it raises,” Beard wrote in an email. “With the recent tragedy it’s human nature for some people to over-emphasize certain aspects of their experience.”

Beard noted that the mausoleum incident did not involve alcohol and that YPT had warned all customers about the political sensitivities of the site.

He added that YPT has taken over 8,000 tourists to North Korea with only one incident, and boasts a 5-star rating and certificate of excellence on the TripAdvisor review website. Johnson did not respond to multiple requests for comment. Beard said Johnson was unavailable to comment and no longer leads tours. He said Johnson was in North Korea on business when Warmbier was detained but was not part of his tour.

John Delury, a North Korea expert at Yonsei University in Seoul, said tour groups barely existed 10 years ago, and any sliver of “responsible engagement” between the U.S. and North Korea is valuable. But he worried about tours that do not educate customers on the nuances and political realities of what they’re seeing.

“Hipster adventure tourism, where it’s like going to a zoo and staring at North Koreans, is problematic,” said Delury, who is familiar with several of the companies running tours into North Korea. “It seems like the framing of Warmbier’s trip was ‘go party and have a good time in Pyongyang.’ That is obviously not how responsible tour companies would frame what they’re about.”

YPT has in recent years expanded its North Korea tours and boasts a long list of other so-called “dark tourism” offerings, ranging from trips to the Chernobyl nuclear disaster site in Ukraine to jaunts through Iraq’s largely autonomous Kurdish region.

Christopher Barbara, a legal consultant who splits his time between Montreal and Shanghai, said he joined a YPT trip to North Korea in 2009 headed by Johnson.

“It was so laid back that it was hard to take seriously,” Barbara said. “The way Young Pioneers managed the trip made it feel like the priority was having fun, not staying safe. I’m not sure it was the right balance, all things considered.”

One morning after they arrived, Barbara told the group’s North Korean minders who were looking for Johnson that he was ill, when he was in fact asleep after a long night.

“I was worried that Gareth’s behavior was going to get us in trouble,” Barbara said. “At times, I felt pressured to cover for him.”

Questionable behavior has cropped up more recently, including on the New Year’s Party tour of Pyongyang in late December 2015 that coincided with the tour that Warmbier was part of.

In an anonymous January 2016 review left on TripAdvisor, a woman who took a train back to China said a YPT guide pulled a prank by helping hide her husband’s passport from border agents. That resulted in a scramble to find the passport and a confrontation with irked North Korean soldiers who briefly held her husband.

Troy Collings, a partner at the tour company, responded to the review on TripAdvisor and apologized, saying that the guide who participated in the prank had been removed from tours and would undergo “retraining.”

“We as company in no way condone any behavior that makes our customers feel unsafe, in danger, or that our guide lacked empathy with you,” Collings wrote. “Whilst we feel there may have been some misunderstandings it does not excuse what happened.”

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International, tour company used by otto warmbier will stop taking americans to north korea.

Bill Chappell

A China-based tour company says it will no longer take U.S. citizens to North Korea. Here, Chinese vendors sell flags of North Korea and China along the Yalu River in Dandong, northern China, along the border with North Korea. Kevin Frayer/Getty Images hide caption

A China-based tour company says it will no longer take U.S. citizens to North Korea. Here, Chinese vendors sell flags of North Korea and China along the Yalu River in Dandong, northern China, along the border with North Korea.

Young Pioneer Tours, the travel company that took Otto Warmbier on a fateful trip to North Korea, will no longer take U.S. citizens into North Korea. The company says the "tragic outcome" of Warmbier's trip — the American died after being jailed and had been in a coma — prompted the change.

Based in China, the touring company promises "adventure holidays"; trips like the one Warmbier took commonly include round-trip travel from Beijing, with several guides for groups of up to 24 tourists.

"There had not been any previous detainment in North Korea that has ended with such tragic finality and we have been struggling to process the result," Young Pioneer Tours said in a statement on its website . "Now, the assessment of risk for Americans visiting North Korea has become too high."

Warmbier, 22, was a student at the University of Virginia when he was arrested in Pyongyang in early January 2016, accused of trying to steal a propaganda poster from an employee area of his hotel. Within weeks, he was sentenced to 15 years in prison and hard labor. His release some 17 months later came as a surprise, particularly when it was revealed that he was in a coma.

North Korean authorities said Warmbier fell into a coma after contracting botulism and taking a sleeping pill. But after his return home to Ohio last week, doctors said they suspected his condition had been caused by cardiopulmonary arrest.

Last week, Warmbier's father, Fred Warmbier, said his son had been "lured" into traveling to North Korea by Young Pioneer Tours and that the company had promised its customers were never detained. Instead, Warmbier said, the company helped his son become "fodder" for the isolated regime.

In the wake of Warmbier's detention and death, the Young Pioneer Tour company has updated is "North Korea FAQ" page, starting with its top question: "How safe is it?"

Weeks before Warmbier took his trip, the travel company's response to that question began ( according to a Web archive ), "Extremely safe! Despite what you may hear, North Korea is probably one of the safest places on Earth to visit."

It now begins: "Despite what you may hear, for most nationalities, North Korea is probably one of the safest places on Earth to visit provided you follow the laws as provided by our documentation and pre-tour briefings."

And where a one-paragraph answer had previously sufficed, the reply is now three paragraphs.

The move to stop taking Americans to North Korea comes after the country had relaxed some of its travel restrictions in recent years — including granting tourist visas to Americans in 2010, Young Pioneer Tours says. But in May, the U.S. State Department reiterated its warnings against traveling there, saying at least 16 Americans had been detained in North Korea in the past 10 years.

As NPR's Michele Kelemen reported last week, U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said his agency is considering a travel visa restriction to North Korea; but that would stop short of a full travel ban, which would require action by Congress.

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I've read a few reviews and may go with them. Share any experiences please

Just got back from DPRK tour which was a arranged by YPT. I couldnt think of a better touroperator to organize a tour into this country. Of course I dont have a comparison but mainly it is all about the relationship between us (visitors) and the local guides plus the western guide. We had Richie from YPT and he was the best! He has been there so many times that basically all the local people we were in touch with (mainly the guides but some others too) knew him and they all would like him! Ive read about some touroperators that dont provide a western guide. That must be weeird!

I'm going to the DPRK in September this year with YPT and so far they have provided very good customer service!

I have previously travelled with a tour company that didn't provide a western guide and it was actually not weird. It was very fun and we got to know our guides very well, and they where great people with a good sence of humor :)

I'm going in April with YPT for the Kim il Sung birthday tour. Just curious, in the pre-tour document they sent, it says to bring some kind of gift for the guides at the start of the trip. What kind of gift did you bring? I'm just trying to get some ideas...

I suggest you give your male guide a carton of cigarettes (they prefer the stronger ones) and/or a small bottle of scotch or brandy. Your female guide will be happy if she receives some nice chocolate and/ or cosmetics (hand lotion, perfume etc).

But you are free to give them what ever you want :-)

They are also a lot more appreciative if you give them things that were not bought in China (I guess they get a lot from there)

European branded products tend to go down quite well

Very interesting...how do the North Korean authorities treat American tourists??

The only time that you really deal with the authorities is at the border crossing. The border guards were actually really friendly and nice to chat to. We had two Brits, two Aussies, one Irish and one American in the group.

The rest of the time, you just deal with the guides. Ours made it pretty clear that they like the American people, just not the government. (though I guess that's exactly what they've been told to say!)

Nice to know they were friendly, not exactly something you would expect!

Yes, despite what people may think, the people in NK are very nice but it is like anywhere else; if you are nice to others, they will most likely be nice to you.

Just got back from DPRK yesterday morning. Regarding YPT, they were very unprofessional, with one of them drunk all the time and very loud. I mean I got what I wanted out of the trip, but I would never go with them again. They put so much pressure to tip and give loads of gifts for the guides, which while nice, is only to the benefit of their company.

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Young Pioneer Tours

Young Pioneer Tours specialise in taking you to North Korea and other worldwide “destinations your mother would rather you stay away from” at budget prices. We combine the best guides in the industry with expert local knowledge and contacts to ensure your adventure is an unparalleled one. Don't be a face in the crowd, be a Pioneer.

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Eurasian Adventure Tour

Eurasian Adventure Tour – Our annual Eurasian adventure is a YPT institution. Over ten years ago, the YPT team came up with the seemingly crazy idea of traversing two continents, the entire Eastern Bloc and the entire former Yugoslavia within a limited amount of time. A decade later, it remains true to its roots and is one of our most popular tours for those who live and breathe off the beaten path adventure travel.

As COVID and the Ukraine conflict still complicates most of travel within Russia and Asia, we will not be starting this year’s tour in Beijing (China), where previously we’d board the Trans-Mongolian Railway onto Russia and to Belarus. Our Eurasia tour for this year will begin in Kiev, Ukraine.

In four weeks you’ll cross through a total of 17 countries, 16 languages, 1 rebel republic & frozen conflict zone, 1 nuclear exclusion zone and 13 currencies. This is the adventure of a lifetime that you will not forget! As with all of our tours, you can join the whole thing, or pop in and out and join any section as you please.

Beginning in Ukraine, one of the largest countries in Europe, you will explore Kiev and Odessa with us as we begin an expedition into the Chernobyl Nuclear Exclusion Zone as well as explore a Soviet nuclear missile base. From Ukraine, you’ll cross through the smuggling territory and into the breakaway state of Transnistria, which tore away from Moldova in a vicious civil war. Today it remains a murky Soviet time warp. From there you’ll enter Europe’s least visited country of Moldova and then board a DDR-era train into the crazy former communist land of Romania. We’ll then head into the ‘Silicon Valley of the Eastern Bloc’, Bulgaria, which will lead us into the Balkan peninsula.

Once in North Macedonia, our tour will begin to traverse the length of the former Yugoslavia through the often recently war-torn countries of Kosovo, Serbia, Montenegro, Bosnia & Herzegovina, and Croatia as well as the former communist hermit kingdom of Albania! As you depart the Balkans, our tour begins to cross through the countries of the Warsaw Pact, taking in their communist remnants as well as the delights of countries reborn under the liberation they found after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

This tour involves multiple border crossings, and as regulations currently stand we can only accept vaccinated tourists with vaccines recognized by all host countries. This is the ultimate YPT tour; only true Pioneers need apply!

Due to the conflict in Ukraine we may need to cancel Group 1: Chernobyl & Ukraine and commence the tour with Group 2 beginning in Chisinau, Moldova including our visit to Transnistria and back to Moldova and concluding in Romania. The remaining groups of Eurasia will continue as scheduled. Contact us to stay updated.

Friday 4th November – Kiev, Ukraine (Group 1)

• Arrive at your convenience into Kiev – the capital city of Ukraine which is well connected from many countries
• For those who arrive early we can arrange an optional visit to a shooting range or to drive a tank , or both!
• Pre-tour meeting will be held at the lobby of our centrally based hotel at 6:00pm to discuss tour itinerary and to meet your fellow travellers and YPT guide.
• Go out for dinner and drinks at Palata No 6, one of our favourite places and recently featured in the list of “10 places to drink in before you die”. Be sure to try the shot requiring you to wear a straitjacket and be set on fire.
• Overnight in hotel.

Saturday 5th November – Chernobyl Exclusion Zone – Kiev Morning

• Wake up nice and early and board our comfortable AC minibus to the Chernobyl exclusion zone. On the way we will stop for breakfast at a well stocked gas station as well as watch a documentary of the Chernobyl disaster. The journey to the first checkpoint will take around two hours.
• On arrival, we go through the entry procedure and processing of our permits. This can take anywhere from fifteen minutes to one hour.
• Visit the village Zalissya, the main square of the town of Chernobyl, “Fukushima” memorial, Statue to Lenin, the abandoned Synagogue and the only active church in the zone.
• Lunch at the Workers’ Café (no produce is grown onsite).
• Visit the Dock, local shops, Monument to the Firefighters, exposition of the remotely operated machines, hills of the buried village Kopachi, rustic kindergarten, panoramic angle of NPPA and existing sarcophagus, the construction site of the new sarcophagus, the Stone Road sign of Pripyat, Bridge of Death, Lenin Street, the main square of Pripyat, supermarket, Amusement Park, School #3 (with gas masks), and the Olympic swimming pool.
• Visit Duga 3, nicknamed the “Russian Woodpecker,” a Soviet over-the-horizon radar at its base Chernobyl-2.
• We will also try our best to visit some sights we cannot mention online.
• After a long day of exploring we board our bus for the drive back to Kiev.
• Arrive in the capital at 6:00pm and refresh in your hotel room before meeting up and heading out for dinner and drinks
• Overnight in Kiev hotel.

Sunday 6th November – Kiev – Odessa Morning

• Load our bags onto the bus and hit the road to Southern Ukraine with a breakfast stop on the way.
• Our first stop will be one of the most incredible sights of Ukraine – a recently-decommissioned Soviet ICBM base located in the wilderness of the Ukrainian steppe. After a simple touch of the red button, the missiles from this top-secret Soviet base would have easily reached New York, Chicago, London or Paris within 30 minutes and the world as we know it would have ended!
• We’ll complete a fully guided tour of the base and even descend into the original control room and have the chance to set off the launch sequence that would have launched the rockets.
• Around the base are hundreds of tons of discarded Soviet military equipment from missiles and tanks to fighter jets and anti aircraft weapons. You are free to film and photograph whatever you like.
• Lunch of traditional Ukrainian dumplings and tea at the base
• Continue our way to Odessa, arriving in the late evening to check into our hotel located within the Arkadia district.
• Dinner in one of the many restaurants surrounding the hotel.
• Overnight in Odessa.

Monday 7th November – Odessa – Tiraspol, Transnistria (Group 2)

• Group 1 members: tour concludes – YPT is able to arrange post-tour accommodation or advice for ongoing transportation
• Group 2 members: meet YPT tour guide and group at hotel lobby
• Meet our local Odessan guide who will take us away from the charming side of the city and show us the dark side of this city.
• This is the ‘Odessa Depression’ tour, prepare for abandoned Stalin era factories, abandoned Soviet brothels and nightclubs and the killing ground of hundreds of victims of the Odessa mafia.
• After seeing the dark underbelly of Odessa, we will give you the chance to explore this famous Black Sea city at your own pace. Downtown offers a range of attractions ranging from the famous Potemkin Steps that were a prominent feature in the famous Sergei Eisenstein silent film Battleship Potemkin. You may wander the lively and charming pedestrian street called Deribavoskaya which is a great place to find great street food, souvenirs, and see local street artists. There is also a quirky smuggling museum that focuses on crime and smuggling in this port city through the centuries up to the current day.
• After lunch we’ll meet back at the hotel to collect our bags and link up with our fixers who will transfer us to Tiraspol, Capital of the breakaway republic of Transnistria.
• On arrival at the border we will cross the no man’s land between Ukraine and Transnistria which is an infamous smuggling route and we register with immigration and KGB/MGB before transferring to the local version of the Soviet Intourist Hotel. This is the quintessential Soviet experience in the region’s original tourist hotel.
• We go for dinner at a local institution and then head into the cellar of a club called ‘Mafia’ to try out some Russian style karaoke!
• Overnight in Soviet Hotel.

Tuesday 8th November – Tiraspol Morning

• For breakfast we’ll head to a great, Ukrainian restaurant in Tiraspol. Be prepared to wash away your hangover as they’re well known for handing out complimentary shots of pepper Vodka, whether it’s 9:00am or not!
• We’ll stop at the flea market in Tiraspol, here it’s possible to buy all kinds of Soviet antiques for rock bottom prices. You never know what you will find!
• We’ll then walk down the main street called October 25th street which has a billboard of former President Smirnoff: The warlord who turned president for almost twenty years. We’ll see the embassies of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, the foreboding HQ of the infamous Sheriff organization and stop at a bookshop to pick up some Russian and Transnistrian nationalist paraphernalia, a mug with Putin or a fridge magnet of ICBMs firing across the atmosphere, why not?
• We’ll then stop at the impressive House of the Soviets, built in Stalinist style with a large bust of Lenin outside.
• We’ll mix with students at the Dolce Vita café, an inexpensive place with great buffet style food and the eatery of choice for students at nearby Tiraspol university.
• We’ll then transfer to the other end of October 25th street to see the North Korean style statue of Russian General Suvorov. Surrounding it are the flags of Russia, Transnistria and the breakaway brotherhood states of Abkhazia, Nagorno-Karabakh and South Ossetia.
• Have your picture taken in front of a giant crest of Transnistria featuring the hammer and sickle!
• Visit Parliament, housing one of the biggest statues of Lenin outside Russia.
• Visit the Eternal Flame Memorial complex dedicated to the Soviet-Afghan war, WW2 and the Transnistrian civil war. Check out the battle damaged T-34 monument to WW2, it’s permitted to climb on it and get an awesome photo.
• We’ll then switch it up and board an old Soviet ferry without an engine and cross the Dniester river to see how the village people live across from Tiraspol. This is an area truly lost in the USSR!
• Visit a still functioning palace of culture with an enormous head of Lenin outside, pockmarked with Kalashnikov bullet holes after Moldovan troops symbolically executed him during the civil war.
• You’ll then visit a stunning and completely self sufficient monastery complex that has to be seen to be believed. We know many of the priests there and sometimes they allow us to sample their incredible homemade wine, however, this is subject to whether the one priest with the key is available on the day.
• Pay a visit to a local store which hasn’t changed since the USSR and still uses an abacus to calculate the total. Here we’ll stock up on $3 Kvint Cognac (One of the best Cognacs in the Soviet era), $1 Vodka and local smoked cheese.
• We then head to a stunning viewpoint and Soviet obelisk that was one of the most brutal battlefields during WW2. In the Russian speaking world, it’s respect to the dead to raise a shot of Cognac or Vodka in their honour and we’ll do just that!
• Return to Tiraspol and head for dinner at 7Fridays, a Tiraspol institution!
• Afterwards we can head to one of the country’s few nightclubs and try our hand at Russian karaoke!
• Overnight in Tiraspol

Wednesday 9th November – Tiraspol – Chisinau, Moldova Morning

• After breakfast we transfer to Bender, one of Transnistria’s biggest cities and a site of fierce fighting during the civil war. We enter one of the largest outdoor markets in all of Transnistria. Guests will be able to shop and buy anything they want at very, very low prices. Also, many opportunities for old world type photos. This is a true old school, Russian market. Expect pigs heads, spices and everything imaginable for sale.
• We leave the market and continue walking down the main street until we reach the main church in the centre, well renovated and a favourite place for couples to get married. Here you can buy inexpensive Russian Orthodox jewellery and icons.
• Check out the city hall which has been left exactly as it was during the civil war and is still filled with bullet holes.
• Continue walking down the main street until we arrive at Lenin Park. We view the main fountain, the bust of Lenin before going into the local cinema which is largely unchanged since Soviet times except Mission Impossible is playing instead of Soviet propaganda.
• We continue to walk down the main street until we reach the train station, renovated and well maintained. It seems like a ghost town because only a few trains stop here, and there are almost no passengers. Besides the train station is an old Soviet train from WWII with the hammer and sickle on the front.
• We’ll have lunch in the town at a local café called CCCP. This is designed to create a sense of nostalgia for locals and is packed with original Soviet memorabilia and great food.
• We head to the river to check out ‘The Great October’ theme park. There are old amusement rides including bumper cars and mini ferris wheels here. A scene right out of the 1950’s, it may look abandoned but the rides are still operating and are very cheap.
• After Bender, we’ll board our bus for the short two hour journey to Chisinau, the capital of Europe’s least visited country: Moldova!
• Check into the local Soviet era hotel and head out for dinner and drinks at an incredible steakhouse.
• Overnight in Chisinau.

Thursday 10th November – Chisinau Morning

• Breakfast at hotel
• We’ll start our city walking tour of Chisinau. We’ll visit the abandoned National Hotel, see one of the most stunning monasteries in the city which was thankfully spared destruction under Communism, see the infamous city prison which has been declared a breach of human rights amongst other things.
• We’ll see the enormous World War II Memorial and climb some tanks and surface to air missiles at the Military Museum!
• Visit the local flea market, great for antiques and Soviet kitsch!
• After lunch, we’ll give you the chance to explore the capital city of Europe’s least visited country at your own pace. This is a great chance to visit the national museum of Moldova, walk out of town and see the brutalist architecture masterpiece that is the partially abandoned Chisinau city circus (also the first circus in the entire USSR) or see the impressive Komsomol monument from the Soviet-era.
• We head for dinner at Dublin Irish Pub, as they say you have not seen a city unless you visit its Irish pub.  For the more sophisticated they also serve fine Moldovan cuisine.
• After dinner you can either head back to the hotel for rest, or join us for a brisk stroll around the vibrant pubs and clubs of Chisinau
• Overnight in Chisinau

Friday 11th November – Chisinau – Overnight train to Bucharest Morning

• Board our bus for the thirty-minute drive to Cricova Winery to see the winemaking process and to of course sample a good amount of Eastern Europe’s best wine! This is one of the most fantastic wine cellars you are ever likely to see.
• Vladimir Putin and Angela Merkel have wine collections here and on display is wine liberated from Hermann Goring during the last days of WW2. Yuri Gagarin famously spent two nights getting drunk in the tunnels and claimed ‘’it was easier to get to space than to pull myself out of Cricova winery!’’.
• In the afternoon, you’ll have the chance to pack in any sights you wanted to see before we leave Europe’s least visited country. Perhaps visit the bustling Central Market which is a great opportunity for unique photography and to pick up some last souvenirs.
• We’ll meet up in the afternoon to grab our bags and souvenir wine and head to the station for the 4:55pm train to Bucharest. This is an old school Communist era 4-berth sleeper and still has the made in the DDR plates on some of the walls!
• During the night, we’ll pass border control and the train will be lifted off the tracks to change wheel gauge
• Overnight on the sleeper train.

Saturday 12th November – Bucharest, Romania (Group 3) Morning

• Early morning arrival in Bucharest (depending on customs).
• Check into the hotel for a short rest.
• Group 2 members: tour concludes – YPT is able to arrange post-tour accommodation or advice for ongoing transportation
• Group 3 members: meet YPT tour guide and group at hotel lobby
• Meet our local Romanian guide for a day tour of Ceausescu’s Bucharest! No trip to Romania would be worth its salt unless we went and looked at everything and anything Nicolae Ceausescu related, the don of Eastern Bloc extreme. We will do a local walking tour, seeing all the must-see sites from “revolutionary” times such as the enormous Palace of the Parliament, see where the Communist regime went down in flames on the bullet riddled streets around Revolutionary Square, see the churches that avoided Communist destruction by being placed on wheels and slid across the city and much more.
• We’ll then give you the chance to explore the city at your own pace. You can use this opportunity to wander the streets of the charming old town, visit the ruins of Dracula’s palace in the centre of the city, explore the flea market near the old Russian church, view a severed arm that is said to bring you luck in one of Bucharest’s most charming churches, or you can venture out of downtown to visit the infamous Spring Palace. It was here during the decades of Communist rule, that Nicolae Ceausescu and his family lived in luxury. Preserved by the military during the violent downfall of Communism in Romania, the house looks almost the same as when the dictator and his family were in power. Expect gold plated bathrooms, gifts from Chairman Mao, and opulence like you’ve never seen!
• Dinner and fresh beer at Caru’ cu bere Restaurant
• Overnight in Bucharest

Sunday 13th November – Bucharest – Sofia, Bulgaria Morning

• After breakfast, grab supplies for our train adventure ahead.
• At 11:00am we’ll board the train to Bulgaria, passing through the Romanian countryside before crossing over the mighty Danube River. This was the site of the infamous gulags forming part of the Black Sea Canal Project in the darkest days of communist Romania.
• We’ll switch trains at the Bulgarian border and board a communist-era train to Sofia.
• We will arrive around 10:00pm and transfer to our nearby hotel
• Dinner, drinks and overnight in Sofia hotel.

Monday 14th November – Sofia Morning

• After breakfast, we’ll head to downtown Sofia and explore this ancient capital with remnants of many empires from the Romans to the Soviets.
• We’ll see the former Communist HQ, remains of the Roman underground, the North Korean style monument to the Red Army and the stunning Alexander Nevsky cathedral.
• We’ll explore the local flea market selling everything from Soviet medals to Nazi daggers.
• For lunch we’ll sample nearby Bulgarian street food and then head out of the city to the former house of the communist dictator of Bulgaria. This stunning mansion, complete with nuclear bunkers, is now the National Museum of Bulgaria and features a huge array of ancient treasures combined with wonderful communist architecture.
• Free time followed by a king’s feast in a wonderful and authentic Bulgarian restaurant tucked in a backstreet away from the tourist area.
• Overnight in Sofia.

Tuesday 15th November – Sofia – Skopje, North Macedonia Morning

• Breakfast, grab supplies and head to the bus station for the 9:00am bus to Skopje, North Macedonia. This is a smooth ride through stunning mountain scenery, and border control which is usually fast and easy.
• We’ll arrive in the mid afternoon and check into our hotel in the hills of Skopje.
• After getting settled, we will take a walk into town and have some Macedonian street food.
• We’ll then start our city tour of Skopje taking in the monument to Tito and the Vendetta Tower used for protection against blood feuds – an ancient violent law that still binds many people in the Balkans.
• Visit to the Mother Teresa museum before marvelling at the many gaudy statues that make up Skopje, including the centrepiece of Alexander the Great on horseback, which cost almost 10 million euro.
• Cross the ancient stone bridge into the charming Ottoman Old Town and step into a different world. This is the perfect place to pick up cheap antiques and try Turkish tea, coffee and sweets.
• We’ll see the formidable fortress of Skopje, which is stunning when illuminated at night.
• Free time to explore at your own pace before meeting up back at the hotel for a traditional Macedonian dinner.
• Overnight in Skopje.

Wednesday 16th November – Skopje – Pristina, Kosovo Morning

• After breakfast we’ll board our private minibus to Pristina, the capital city of Kosovo – one of the world’s youngest countries!
• On the way to Pristina, we will stop at Matka and take a walk along the gorge. It is labelled as the most beautiful place in North Macedonia and this credit is highly deserved! As we’re visiting in winter, we’ll mostly have the entire gorge to ourselves.
• Following lunch at an awesome restaurant overlooking Matka, we will continue onto Pristina.
• Check into our very comfortable private apartments at in Pristina. The apartments are run by a very hospitable Kosovan family who kept this business going even through the darkest days of the Kosovo War.
• Depending on arrival time, we’ll then head downtown and check out the fascinating Ethnographic Museum, detailing life in a traditional Kosovar home in centuries gone by.
• We’ll then visit the museum of Kosovo with discarded artillery and weapons left over from the war. Usually devoid of visitors, this museum details the ancient history of this land and covers their brutal fight for independence.
• Visit a local Kosovan restaurant for delicious food and to warm ourselves up with their homemade rakija !
• Overnight in private apartment in Pristina.

Thursday 17th November – Mitrovica – Pristina Morning

• Early wake up, breakfast and head to the bus station for the quick bus journey to Mitrovica.
• This tense and divided city was the scene of numerous bloody fights and international incidents. Divided into two parts by a river, Kosovan and Serbian, each side is like crossing into a different nation.
• We’ll arrive on the Kosovo side and grab lunch in a local restaurant, before exploring the sights on this side of the river.
• Cross the tense bridge, guarded by international peacekeepers, and enter the Serbian side. We will see huge political murals honouring Serb commanders, generals, and paramilitaries as well as visit a bizarre souvenir shop that sells every pro-Russian, pro-Putin and pro-Serbian thing you can imagine.
• Take a leisurely walk to the top of the town, where there is an odd communist monument with incredible views over this divided city. It’s common to catch glimpses of international Black Hawk helicopters patrolling the city.
• We cross back into the Kosovo side and catch the bus back to Pristina.
• On arrival we start our city tour of Pristina, taking in things like the Bill Clinton statue on Bill Clinton Boulevard, and stroll past the university to the Grand Hotel and UNMIK, the Skenderberg monument and the new Government Building, then the historic mosques and the tight lanes of the Old Quarter. You will see cafes, street market stalls, kids hawking cigarettes and phone cards, plus the vibrant life of Kosovo’s biggest city.
• Free time back at the hotel before we head out for a group dinner in an awesome little local restaurant, where you will be brought numerous local dishes until you can take no more!
• Overnight in Pristina.

Friday 18th November – Brod – Tirana, Albania Morning

• Wake up early to board our private bus for the extremely scenic four hour drive to Brod.
• Brod is populated by the Gorani people. The Gorani have a total population of roughly 50,000 people. They are primarily sheep and cattle herders, but also have a cartel network of dessert/sweet shops. They live in a very geographically small mountainous area of the most southern part of Kosovo, in and near the city of Dragash just south of Prizren. The Gorani have their own language, which is a Torlakian Slavic language, related to Serbian and Macedonian, with Albanian and Turkish loanwords.
• We will stop for lunch at the new hotel that has been built just on the outskirts of Brod.
• We take our time walking around the old village, where there are numerous chances for some great photos and some wonderful hiking routes.
• The village was heavily damaged during the Kosovo war as both Serbian troops and Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) militias operated in the area. Many homes are still ruined by artillery and NATO strikes. Some of the walls of buildings are still daubed with ‘Allahu Akbar’’, faded graffiti left by the KLA.
• Begin our trip to Tirana and check into the centrally located hotel.
• Head out in the evening for some incredible Albanian food, followed by rakija in a spinning sky bar located downtown Tirana. Doesn’t drinking grape-based moonshine while spinning in a circle at the top of one of Tirana’s tallest buildings sounds like a great idea?
• Overnight in Tirana.

Saturday 19th November – Tirana – Budva, Montenegro (Group 4) Morning

• Breakfast at the hotel
• Group 3 members: tour concludes – YPT is able to arrange post-tour accommodation or advice for ongoing transportation
• Group 4 members: meet YPT tour guide and group at hotel lobby
• Store our bags and begin an extensive city tour of Albania, we will see many relics of the communist regime, including a bizarre and foreboding pyramid that is perfect for climbing up for those who are brave enough!
• Visit the infamous House of Leaves, this was the surveillance centre that the communist authorities used to spy on the population of Albania, foreign embassies and the rare foreign tourists that dared to enter the country back then.
• Lunch at one of Tirana’s many great restaurants, with the option to eat in the ironic KFC that now overlooks the former home of Enver Hoxha.
• Visit to one of Tirana’s best kept secrets: a collection of hulking Soviet statues hidden beneath an alleyway. While it is not allowed to enter, as always, your YPT guide can get around it and allow you to get some great shots of Tirana’s former Lenin and Stalin monuments!
• Explore the vast former government bunkers of the Hoxha regime, this is where the running of the country would have been coordinated from in the event of an expected nuclear war and is a great insight into the advanced paranoia of the regime.
• Head back to the hotel and meet our driver for the trip to Montenegro through the mountains of Northern Albania!
• On arrival in Budva, we’ll check into our accommodation in the old town and walk along the coast to a local bikers bar for dinner and drinks.
• Overnight in Budva.

Sunday 20th November – Budva – Overnight on train to Belgrade, Serbia Morning

• Breakfast and begin a tour of the beautiful Montenegro coastlines! We will see Saint Stefan, Budva, Kotor and other little villages around the area. This really is one of the most beautiful parts of Europe but is still relatively untouched.
• We’ll see the marina sporting the super-yachts of Russian and European billionaires. We’ll be able to get very close to these incredible displays of wealth.
• Lunch and visit to a yard full of former Yugoslavian attack submarines and anti-aircraft guns.
• After a short hike into the hills above Kotor, we’ll head to Bar for some quick dinner, before we board the Yugoslavian-era overnight train to Belgrade.
• As this train has no dining cart, we will stack up on drinks and snacks before we depart
• Overnight on the train.

Monday 21st November – Belgrade Morning

• Early morning arrival into Belgrade and head to our hotel for the night: a former Yugoslavian cruise ship now turned into a floating hotel!
• After a rest and freshen up at the hotel we head out to explore Belgrade and join a communist tour. Find out the most interesting stories about former Yugoslavia, World War II, Tito’s life, Youth Relay Baton Movement, 90s war, NATO bombing of Serbia and Montenegro in 1999 and democratic changes at the beginning of the third millennium. Visit Museum of Yugoslav history which is also a resting place for the lifetime president of Yugoslavia, Tito.
• Explore such sites as the Republic Square, Bohemian Quarter, Kalemegdan Park, and the Belgrade Fortress.
• Explore the grounds of rival teams Red Star Belgrade and Partizan Belgrade, whose stadiums are covered in interesting political graffiti. Both of these teams have infamous gangs of ultras, many of whom formed ruthless paramilitary squads during the 90s wars.
• We’ll then head out to sample the delicious local cuisine. Tonight, we will go to Skadarlija – the pedestrian street through in which old Belgradian music can constantly be heard. As if the bars, restaurants, and music weren’t enough to keep us entertained on this street, it is also home to incredible artwork which adorn the blank-walled buildings on the south side.
• Stay out as late as you desire – Belgrade has many, many busy party spots
• Overnight in Belgrade.

Tuesday 22nd November – Belgrade – Sarajevo (Bosnia & Herzegovina) Morning

• After breakfast, we’ll board our private transport to the war-torn capital of Bosnia and Herzegovina: Sarajevo.
• The drive to Bosnia is stunning and takes in rolling mountain scenery.
• Arriving in the late evening, we’ll check into our accommodation downtown for a short rest before heading back out to town to warm ourselves up with traditional burek (meat pie) and local wine.
• Overnight in Sarajevo.

Wednesday 23rd November – Sarajevo Morning

• We head out and grab breakfast in Sarajevo, for coffee lovers, Bosnian coffee is incredible!
• We then meet our local guides and minibus for an excursion to the tunnel of hope, a war-damaged home with a tunnel network underneath that is now a museum and a fascinating insight into the lifeline of this city when it was under the longest siege in history.
• Visit the Serbian side of Sarajevo, complete with Ratko Mladic banners lining the streets. We continue up to the mountain that overlooks Sarajevo and provides stunning views. We then explore the bobsleigh track from the 1984 Winter Olympics, surrounded by bunkers. This eerie monument has been left to decay since the war but provides excellent urban exploration and photography opportunities. On the way we will have the chance to explore many war-damaged abandoned buildings.
• We head back down into Sarajevo, stopping at the spot where Archduke Franz Ferdinand was dramatically assassinated – an event which sparked the First World War – before grabbing lunch nearby.
• Begin the Sarajevo War Tour, covering sights related to siege time, such as the Sarajevo roses, Children’s memorial, Post office, Canned beef memorial, Sniper Alley, Holiday Inn Hotel. The tour will also feature personal stories from the war from the local guide.
• Free time in the evening before exploring the Ottoman-style Old Town, its markets and sampling some of the amazing Sarajevo cuisines before winding down with some drinks.
• Overnight in Sarajevo hotel.

Thursday 24th November – Sarajevo – Zagreb, Croatia Morning

• Breakfast, stock up on supplies and catch the morning bus to Zagreb. As this bus is during the daytime, we will enjoy incredible Balkan scenery as we make our way from Bosnia to Croatia.
• We’ll pass through many war-ravaged and forgotten towns and cities across Bosnia before we arrive in Zagreb at around 8:00pm – a perfect time to check in, wash up and head out for some food.
• We will walk from the hotel, through the Christmas Market and pick up some mulled wine and food from the fair.
• Overnight at Zagreb hotel.

Friday 25th November – Zagreb – Ljubljana, Slovenia Morning

• Wake up and enjoy a delicious Croatian breakfast! From the plethora of mouth-watering foods offered by Balkan countries, many would argue that Croatian food is amongst the best.
• As we kick off our tour of the Croatian capital, we move away from the hipster coffee shops and quaint colourful streets as we go underground to the infamous war tunnels of Zagreb.
• Located under the historic neighbourhood of Grič, the war tunnel consists of a central hall and various passageways. It was built during World War II by the infamous Fascist regime known as the Ustaše to serve both as a bomb shelter and a promenade, but following WW2, it quickly fell into disrepair and disuse.
• As the Yugoslav Wars erupted in the 1990s, the tunnel saw renewed use functioning as a shelter during the Croatian War of Independence. It later went on to host one of the first raves in Croatia.
• In 2016, the tunnel was remodelled and opened to the public, serving as a tourist attraction and hosting cultural events. There was also a museum of the bombing of Zagreb which, of course, we’ll explore.
• As we return to street level, we’ll grab a classic Balkan coffee to rest up a little.
• As this was the land from where Josip Broz ‘Tito’ was from, you’ll learn everything you need to know about life during the communist era in Croatia, the fall of Yugoslavia, and the darkest times in Croatian history that came in the 1990s.
• To see this stunning Balkan capital in all of its glory, we’ll take a funicular to the top of the city and explore the cobblestoned streets looking down over Zagreb.
• For those who wish to explore Zagreb at their own pace, we can give you some time to explore on your own before meeting up again in the evening for a meal of hearty Croatian food.
• For those who wish to explore with a guide, we can check out one of the more quirky museums of Europe, there’s the option to visit the unique and inherently bizarre Museum of Broken Relationships. Inside you can find everything from murder weapons to high heels stolen from a dominatrix in Amsterdam.
• After dinner, we will head to the bus station to grab some snacks and depart on the comfortable three-hour bus to Ljubljana, the capital of Slovenia.
• After checking into our hotel, we’ll head out for some food and enjoy the local Christmas markets.
• Overnight in Ljubljana.

Saturday 26th November – Ljubljana – Budapest, Hungary (Group 5) Morning

• Group 4 members: tour concludes – YPT is able to arrange post-tour accommodation or advice for ongoing transportation
• Group 5 members: meet YPT tour guide and group at hotel lobby
• Begin the communist tour of Ljubljana in the morning to explore the one Yugoslavian country that mostly avoided the horrors of the 1990’s Yugoslav wars.
• Lunch in the city before we board the afternoon bus to the Hungarian capital of Budapest!
• Check into hotel and overnight in Budapest.

Sunday 27th November – Budapest Morning

• After breakfast, we’ll head to the outskirts of Budapest to Memento Park; this is where the many hulking Soviet monuments that dominated the city during communist times were dumped.
• We’ll then head back to the centre of Budapest to visit the infamous ‘Hospital in the Rock’, a bunker used as a hospital by the Nazis and later converted into a nuclear bomb shelter by the Soviets.
• Free time to explore Budapest at your own pace before we meet up in the evening for a hearty meal and a few drinks.
• Overnight in Budapest.

Monday 28th November – Budapest – Bratislava, Slovakia Morning

• Breakfast and board the bus at Budapest Station to begin our three hour journey to Bratislava, capital of Slovakia.
• Arrival and transfer to our accommodation and a chance for some quick R&R before we head out for some lunch.
• We’ll then meet our local guides who will pick us up in a communist-era Skoda and take us on an action packed tour of alternative Bratislava. Expect abandoned communist weapons factories, Soviet war monuments and Brutalist architecture, as well as a short jaunt into Austria as we step over the border.
• Return to Bratislava for dinner in a local beer hall with fantastic Slovakian food.
• Overnight in Bratislava.

Tuesday 29th November – Bratislava – Prague, Czech Republic Morning

• After breakfast, we jump on the bus from Bratislava to Prague.
• Afternoon arrival, before we transfer to our hotel in a non tourist area of Prague.
• We’ll enjoy some free time in Prague to rest up after a long tour before meeting in the evening for dinner and drinks in the authentic part of Prague away from the tourist crowds.
• Overnight in Prague.

Wednesday 30th November – Prague – Overnight to Krakow, Poland Morning

• Our first stop of the day will be the Museum of Communism. Located next to a casino and above a McDonald’s in what was once a nobleman’s palace, the Prague Museum of Communism recalls an era of the ever-shifting identity of Czechia that was ruled by an oppressive communist regime. Open since 2001, this incredible museum includes a statue of Lenin, a replica classroom from the era complete with eerie student mannequins, and propaganda posters that display the often-sensational imagery of the time.
• We’ll grab lunch before having free time to enjoy the old town of Prague
• Meetup back at the hotel for our overnight transport to Krakow, Poland.
• Overnight on bus or train.

Thursday 1st December – Krakow Morning

• Early morning arrival into Krakow. We drop our bags at the hotel before meeting our driver for a journey into one of the darkest periods of the 20th Century: the Holocaust.
• We drive to the town of Oswiecim and onward to Auschwitz Concentration Camp, the site of the biggest mass extermination of the 20th century.
• We begin with a tour of Camp One, home of the infamous ‘work makes you free’ sign, the gas chambers and crematoria, before heading to Camp 2.
• This trip lasts the whole day and is a very physically and emotionally draining experience.
• Head back to Krakow for free time to absorb the day’s events.
• We head out for dinner and drinks in this extremely picturesque and Christmassy town.
• Overnight in Krakow.

Friday 2nd December – Krakow – Warsaw Morning

• We take the early morning train to Warsaw and check into our hotel.
• We’ll take you on a tour of alternative Warsaw, focusing on the brutal battle that took place here in WW2 and the subsequent communist years.
• We’ll pay a visit to one of Europe’s best WW2 museums complete with Nazi and Soviet tanks, rockets, planes and artillery.
• Traditional Polish dinner and drinks to round off our epic adventure.
• Overnight in Warsaw

Saturday 3rd December – Warsaw

• Group 5 members: tour concludes – YPT is able to arrange post-tour accommodation or advice for ongoing transportation

Yugoslavia’s iron fist: the life of Josip Broz Tito 

Wife of a Romanian Dictator – 5 Shocking Facts About Elena Ceaucescu

Bulgarian Cuisine

Exploring Albania: Why this Overlooked Country Deserves More Attention

Europe’s least visited country: 4 reasons to visit Moldova

5 Incredible Serbian Women From Famous to Infamous

5 Things You Didn’t Know About Transnistria (and why you should visit)

VDNKh: the Soviet Disneyland

Transnistria FAQ

5 facts about Chernobyl you might not know

The Shadow of Chernobyl: a visit to Pripyat and the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone

The Five Best Eastern European Countries You’ve Never Thought of Visiting

Mitrovica – A City Divided

How to live in a Soviet time warp: Living in Transnistria

Eurasian Adventure Tour Part 2

• Tour Extensions

Want to extend your YPT adventure? Join one of our great tour extensions

Kiev Shooting Range Extension

Kiev Tank Driving Extension

• Start Date : November 4th 2022 End Date : December 3rd 2022
• Price : €395 - €2130
• Duration: 2 days - 30 days

Tour Highlights

• Where to begin? Visit every single former Warsaw Pact country, a number of former-USSR soviets, and even an unrecognized country in Transnistria!
• Explore the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone, Pripyat ghost town, where there will be super secret activities for us while we’re there, and visit the ICBM Missile Base where Soviet missiles could have been launched against western Europe and North America
• Visit all the former Yugoslav republics, from Belgrade to Sarajevo, and get a feel for a region that is living history. We also check out Albania and of course, Kosovo

Inclusions and exclusions

• All transportation to complete itinerary
• Twin-share or triple-share accommodation
• Entrance fees for all mentioned monuments
• Lunch at Chernobyl Exclusion Zone
• Local English speaking guides and YPT guide
• Visa Fees – We can provide same day invitation letters to Russia
• Transportation to and from the beginning and end of tour
• Travel insurance
• Single supplement (€40/night)
• Meals and drinks
• Personal expenses
• Tips for the local guides and drivers

We have expert guides ready to help answer any questions you may have.

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