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The Untold Story of Otto Warmbier, American Hostage

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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.

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.

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.

Timeline of Otto Warmbier's saga in North Korea

The U.S. student died on Monday.

— -- The American college student who had been imprisoned in North Korea for more than a year has died after returning to the U.S. in a state of unresponsive wakefulness, according to a statement from his family.

Otto Warmbier was sentenced to 15 years of hard labor in March 2016 after being accused of attempting to steal a propaganda poster from his Pyongyang hotel while visiting the country. The details of his detention and what led to the unresponsive wakefulness are still unknown, but he passed away Monday -- just days after U.S. officials secured his release and returned him to his family in Ohio.

Here is the timeline of Warmbier’s ordeal.

January 2016

Warmbier, then 21, was visiting North Korea as part of a tourist group arranged by Young Pioneer Tours, a tour agency based in Xian, China. He was arrested on Jan. 2 at Pyongyang Sunan International Airport on the last day of a five-day tour.

Three weeks later, North Korea announced it was holding Warmbier, a student at the University of Virginia , for a “hostile act” against the state. In late February, Warmbier appeared in a video released by North Korea’s state news agency.

“I committed my crime ,” he said in the video, asking for forgiveness. It is not known if Warmbier had delivered those statements under duress.

The video could not be independently verified.

Warmbier, of Wyoming, Ohio, reportedly said in a tearful statement ahead of the trial in Pyongyang that he tried to steal the poster in exchange for a $10,000 used car.

"I have made the worst mistake of my life," the student said in a March 16 court hearing.

He also said that the Z Society, a secret club at the University of Virginia, promised him membership if he was successful at stealing the poster, according to The New York Times, citing North Korean state media. A member at the Z society at UVA that the organization had never been in contact with Warmbier.

Warmbier was sentenced to 15 years of hard labor.

Since his detention, American officials have repeatedly urged North Korean officials -- in public and in private -- to give the Swedish consulate access to Warmbier and the three other American citizens now detained. These pleas come amid regular pushes for their release.

February 2017

After he was sworn in as U.S. Secretary of State, Rex Tillerson briefed President Donald Trump on the situation and Trump directed Tillerson to take all appropriate measures to secure the release of American hostages in North Korea, State Department officials said Tuesday. Tillerson began the effort and routinely updated the president, the officials said.

The special representative for North Korea policy at the U.S. State Department met high-level representatives from the North Korean Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Oslo, Norway, the State Department said. North Koreans reportedly agreed to authorize the Swedish Embassy in Pyongyang to pay a consular visit to all four detainees, according to the State Department -– although it is unclear if they were ever able to conduct that visit.

Student released from North Korea has been in a coma for more than a year, family says

Sometime afterward, North Korea then urgently requested an in-person meeting with the United States in New York City, the State Department said.

June 6, 2017

State Department Special Representative Joseph Yun met with DPRK UN Mission Ambassador Pak in New York City. During this meeting, Yun learned about Warmbier's medical condition, the State Department said.

June 6 through June 11, 2017

After consulting Trump, Tillerson instructed Yun to prepare to travel to North Korea to bring Warmbier back to the United States, according to the State Department, which promptly organizes a medical team and an airplane to travel to North Korea.

Sometime during that week, Warmbier’s family was notified of his condition, according to a statement released by the family.

June 12, 2017

North Korean officials met the American delegation in Pyongyang, the State Department said. Upon arrival, Yun and two doctors were able to visit Warmbier that morning, according to the State Department. The visit was the first time the United States was able to confirm Warmbier's status after he was sentenced.

The State Department said that Yun demanded Warmbier's release while on the ground, but sources tell ABC News that Yun and others made the arrangements for his release prior to Yun's trip.

June 13, 2017

Warmbier was evacuated from North Korea, accompanied by a medical team and a State Department representative. He arrived in Cincinnati, Ohio, in the evening, and was to be transported by ambulance to the University of Cincinnati Medical Center.

June 19, 2017

Warmbier passed away surrounded by his family at the University of Cincinnati Medical Center, according to a statement from his family. He was 22 years old.

In their statement, his family said Warmbier was "unable to speak, unable to see and unable to react to verbal commands" when he returned to the U.S., appearing "very uncomfortable -- almost anguished." That changed within a day, they said. "He was at peace. He was home and we believe he could sense that."

The family remembered Otto as "a warm, engaging, brilliant young man whose curiosity and enthusiasm for life knew no bounds."

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Otto Warmbier Got an Extra Dose of Brutality From North Korea. The Mystery Is Why.

By Choe Sang-Hun Austin Ramzy and Motoko Rich

• June 14, 2017

SEOUL, South Korea — One American who was held captive in North Korea said he was interrogated up to 15 hours a day by officials who wanted him to confess to plotting to overthrow their government. Another said she was held in a 5-by-6-foot windowless cell. Yet another former American inmate shivered on the concrete floor of a room “no bigger than a dog’s house.’’

But despite a history of such treatment of prisoners dating to the 1950-53 Korean War, North Korea has generally refrained from physically abusing the Americans it has held in recent decades. That makes the case of Otto Warmbier, a 22-year-old American college student who had been serving a 15-year sentence in North Korea, even more striking.

Mr. Warmbier was released in a coma and returned on Tuesday to the United States, where he was immediately taken to the University of Cincinnati Medical Center for treatment. Details of his condition are not yet known. A senior American official has said the United States obtained intelligence reports that he had been repeatedly beaten. His fate has cast new attention on how North Korea treats foreigners in captivity.

North Korea is known to have detained 16 American citizens since 1996, including three who are still in custody . They have been subjected to varying degrees of mental abuse but less often physical torture.

Despite its longstanding enmity toward the United States and its allies, North Korea remains deeply sensitive to outside criticism of its human rights record, billing itself as a righteous nation that respects international norms. And while its propagandists have presented American prisoners as proof that the United States has been sending subversive agents into the country, it has also used them as bargaining chips in dealing with Washington, analysts said. The prospect that the Americans might eventually be released as part of negotiations seems to have influenced their treatment.

“There seems to be a general attitude of not using physical violence against Americans, although they don’t appear unwilling to use psychological tactics and that sort thing,” said Robert R. King, a former State Department special envoy for North Korea human rights issues who handled Mr. Warmbier’s case until he retired in January. “This situation with Warmbier is likely something that happened that they did not intend.”

The worst known case of abuse before Mr. Warmbier was that of Robert Park, a Christian missionary who said he was severely beaten by North Korean soldiers after he was caught in 2009 while walking across the border from China waving a Bible. After he was transferred to Pyongyang, North Korea, he said, he was subjected to torture so horrific he begged for death.

“Several North Korean women surrounded me and did the worst thing to me to try to make me commit suicide,” Mr. Park said in an interview with the South Korean news agency Yonhap. He said the women beat his genitals with a club.

Mr. Park has said he was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder and has attempted suicide since his release. One former American detainee, Evan C. Hunziker, took his own life less than a month after he was released from North Korea in 1996, although it was unclear whether this was related to his experiences in the North.

In a 2015 interview , the former detainee Aijalon Gomes recalled “a cement cell, which was beyond freezing.” He was later taken to a house where he was instructed to make bricks all day. Asked whether he was tortured, he said, “There were moments of violence and of humanity.”

Laura Ling, who was held in North Korea in 2009 together with a fellow American journalist, Euna Lee, said she was held in a dark 5-by-6-foot cell.

“Once I heard those words, ‘12 years,’ come from the judge, I could barely stand up straight,” Ms. Ling said on the “ Oprah Winfrey Show ,” recalling the day she and Ms. Lee were sentenced to 12 years of hard labor for illegal entry into the country. She spiraled into a deep depression.

But she was not sent to a labor camp but was instead moved to a regular room while she was treated for ulcers. She was also allowed to place a few calls and send letters to her sister, husband and parents in the United States. She even taught curious guards a few yoga poses.

The two women were released later in 2009 after former President Bill Clinton visited Pyongyang.

It was a similar pattern for Kenneth Bae , a Korean-American missionary who was sentenced to 15 years of hard labor on charges of trying to establish a secret proselytizing network in the North.

In his book “Not Forgotten,” Mr. Bae said his North Korean captors interrogated him up to 15 hours a day for the first four weeks. His treatment improved only after he wrote a confession in which he described himself as a terrorist who plotted to overthrow the government.

Mr. Bae toiled on a soybean farm and lost more than 30 pounds. But he was allowed to read emails from his family and friends in the United States. He was hospitalized three times for problems including diabetes, an enlarged heart and back pain. And he was permitted to read his Bible.

While his treatment was harsh, Mr. Bae said he also sensed an undercurrent of respect toward foreigners by the North Korean authorities, who were concerned about their image abroad. He was never beaten, said Mr. Bae, who was freed in 2014 after the American government sent the director of national intelligence at the time, James R. Clapper Jr., to Pyongyang.

Some of the American detainees even said they were treated rather decently.

Matthew Todd Miller said he was surprised that he was allowed to keep his iPhone and iPad for “at least a month” after his arrival in North Korea, enabling him to listen to music and access other stored information, although he could not use them to send or receive messages.

“I was prepared for the torture. But instead of that, I was killed with kindness,” he said in an interview with NK News.

Another former detainee, Jeffrey E. Fowle, also said he was never harmed physically during nearly six months in detention.

Arturo Pierre Martinez said he was treated “well,” and was even allowed out to take photos like a tourist.

Mr. King said North Korea appeared to be very concerned about the health of the Americans it held.

“They don’t want anyone to die on their watch,” he said. “This is why the Otto Warmbier case is unusual.”

In his book “The Last P.O.W.,” the journalist Mike Chinoy said that a North Korean doctor and nurse appeared to check the blood pressure, pulse and heartbeat of Merrill E. Newman, then an 85-year-old American detainee, four times a day. Mr. Newman was released after 42 days in 2013.

“The North Koreans have traditionally not wanted to keep Americans if there’s a possibility of having a health issue,” Mr. King said.

Mr. King said that Mr. Warmbier was treated much like other Americans until his trial in March last year, when he was sentenced to 15 years of hard labor for trying to steal a political banner from his hotel in Pyongyang.

What happened afterward is unclear. His family in Cincinnati reportedly was told that after his trial he contracted botulism and took a sleeping pill, and then fell into a coma. Mr. King suspected that North Korea may have been less willing to provide information about Mr. Warmbier’s health during rising tension over recent American sanctions against the country.

The news about Mr. Warmbier deepened the anxiety among families of South Koreans and Japanese citizens held in the North. North Korea is accused of kidnapping more than 450 South Koreans, mostly fishermen, and 12 Japanese citizens in the decades after the Korean War.

“This sounded like a warning to us, signaling what might happen to our family members if we spoke out against human rights abuses in the North,” said Hwang In-cheol, whose father was on a South Korean airliner hijacked to the North in 1969.

The families of the Japanese citizens who the government says were abducted by North Korea in the 1970s and early ’80s know the pain of waiting for loved ones to return. North Korea has told the Japanese government that eight of the 12 are now dead but many families refuse to give up.

Shigeo Iizuka, 79, refuses to believe that his sister, Yaeko Taguchi, who was abducted in 1978, died in a traffic accident in North Korea.

“All we want is that all the abductees, including Yaeko, return as soon as possible,” he said.

He said he was shocked to hear of Mr. Warmbier’s release in a coma. “It’s like a warning to the U.S.,’’ he said.

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U.S. college student gets harsh sentence in N. Korea

Updated on: March 16, 2016 / 8:18 AM EDT / AP

PYONGYANG, North Korea -- North Korea's highest court sentenced an American tourist to 15 years in prison with hard labor on Wednesday for subversion.

Otto Warmbier, a University of Virginia undergraduate, was convicted and sentenced in a one-hour trial in North Korea 's Supreme Court.

He was charged with subversion under Article 60 of North Korea's criminal code. The court held that he had committed a crime "pursuant to the U.S. government's hostile policy toward (the North), in a bid to impair the unity of its people after entering it as a tourist."

Before the trial, the 21-year-old from Wyoming, Ohio, said he had tried to steal a propaganda banner as a trophy for an acquaintance who wanted to hang it in her church. That would be grounds in North Korea for a subversion charge.

Trials for foreigners facing similar charges in North Korea are generally short and punishments severe. Warmbier was arrested as he tried to leave the country in early January. He was in North Korea with a New Year's tour group.

U.S. tourism to North Korea is legal. Arrests of tourists are rare but the U.S. State Department strongly advises against such travel.

North Korea announced Warmbier's arrest in late January, saying he committed an anti-state crime with "the tacit connivance of the U.S. government and under its manipulation." It remains unclear how the U.S. government was allegedly connected to Warmbier's actions.

Warmbier had been staying at the Yanggakdo International Hotel. It is common for sections of tourist hotels to be reserved for North Korean staff and off-limits to foreigners.

In a tearful statement made before his trial , Warmbier told a gathering of reporters in Pyongyang he tried to take the banner as a trophy for the mother of a friend who said she wanted to put it up in her church.

He said he was offered a used car worth $10,000 if he could get a banner and was also told that if he was detained and didn't return, $200,000 would be paid to his mother in the form of a charitable donation.

Warmbier said he accepted the offer because his family was "suffering from very severe financial difficulties."

Warmbier also said he had been encouraged by the university's "Z Society," which he said he was trying to join. The magazine of the university's alumni association describes the Z Society as a "semi-secret ring society" founded in 1892 that conducts philanthropy, puts on honorary dinners and grants academic awards.

In previous cases, people who have been detained in North Korea and made a public confession often recant those statements after their release.

North Korea regularly accuses Washington and Seoul of sending spies to overthrow its government to enable the U.S.-backed South Korean government to take control of the Korean Peninsula.

Tensions are particularly high following North Korea's recent nuclear test and rocket launch, and massive joint military exercises now underway between the U.S. and South Korea that the North sees as a dress rehearsal for invasion.

Further complicating matters, Washington and Pyongyang do not have diplomatic relations. The Swedish Embassy in Pyongyang acts as a go-between in consular issues when U.S. citizens run afoul of North Korean authorities.

In the past, North Korea has held out until senior U.S. officials or statesmen came to personally bail out detainees, all the way up to former President Bill Clinton, whose visit in 2009 secured the freedom of American journalists Euna Lee and Laura Ling.

In November 2014, U.S. spy chief James Clapper went to Pyongyang to bring home Matthew Miller, who had ripped up his visa when entering the country, and Korean-American missionary Kenneth Bae, who had been incarcerated since November 2012.

Jeffrey Fowle, another U.S. tourist from Ohio detained for six months at about the same time as Miller, was released just before that and sent home on a U.S. government plane.

Fowle left a Bible in a local club hoping a North Korean would find it, which is considered a criminal offense in North Korea.

• North Korea

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North Korea sentences U.S. tourist Otto Warmbier to 15 years in prison

21-year-old from ohio said he tried to steal a propaganda banner for a friend.

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North Korea's highest court sentenced an American tourist to 15 years in prison with hard labour for subversion on Wednesday, weeks after authorities presented him to media and he tearfully confessed that he had tried to steal a propaganda banner.

Otto Warmbier, a University of Virginia undergraduate, was convicted and sentenced in a one-hour trial in North Korea's Supreme Court.

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He was charged with subversion under Article 60 of North Korea's criminal code. The court held that he had committed a crime "pursuant to the U.S. government's hostile policy toward (the North), in a bid to impair the unity of its people after entering it as a tourist."

North Korea regularly accuses Washington and Seoul of sending spies to overthrow its government to enable the U.S.-backed South Korean government to take control of the Korean Peninsula.

Tensions are particularly high following North Korea's recent nuclear test and rocket launch, and massive joint military exercises now underway between the U.S. and South Korea that the North sees as a dress rehearsal for invasion.

Before the trial, the 21-year-old from Wyoming, Ohio, said he had tried to steal a propaganda banner as a trophy for an acquaintance who wanted to hang it in her church. That would be grounds in North Korea for a subversion charge.

Trials for foreigners facing similar charges in North Korea are generally short and punishments severe. Warmbier was arrested as he tried to leave the country in early January. He was in North Korea with a New Year's tour group.

Tourist arrests rare

U.S. tourism to North Korea is legal. Arrests of tourists are rare but the U.S. State Department strongly advises against travel to the country.

Further complicating matters, Washington and Pyongyang do not have diplomatic relations. The Swedish Embassy in Pyongyang acts as a go-between in consular issues when U.S. citizens run afoul of North Korean authorities

North Korea announced Warmbier's arrest in late January, saying he committed an anti-state crime with "the tacit connivance of the U.S. government and under its manipulation." It remains unclear how the U.S. government was allegedly connected to Warmbier's actions.

Warmbier had been staying at the Yanggakdo International Hotel. It is common for sections of tourist hotels to be reserved for North Korean staff and off-limits to foreigners.

In a tearful statement made before his trial, Warmbier told a gathering of reporters in Pyongyang he tried to take the banner as a trophy for the mother of a friend who said she wanted to put it up in her church.

He said he was offered a used car worth $10,000 if he could get a banner and was also told that if he was detained and didn't return, $200,000 would be paid to his mother in the form of a charitable donation.

Encouraged by 'Z Society'

Warmbier said he accepted the offer because his family was "suffering from very severe financial difficulties."

Warmbier also said he had been encouraged by the university's "Z Society," which he said he was trying to join. The magazine of the university's alumni association describes the Z Society as a "semi-secret ring society" founded in 1892 that conducts philanthropy, puts on honorary dinners and grants academic awards.

In previous cases, people who have been detained in North Korea and made a public confession often recant those statements after their release.

In the past, North Korea has held out until senior U.S. officials or statesmen came to personally bail out detainees, all the way up to former President Bill Clinton, whose visit in 2009 secured the freedom of American journalists Euna Lee and Laura Ling.

In November 2014, U.S. spy chief James Clapper went to Pyongyang to bring home Matthew Miller, who had ripped up his visa when entering the country, and Korean-American missionary Kenneth Bae, who had been incarcerated since November 2012.

Jeffrey Fowle, another U.S. tourist from Ohio detained for six months at about the same time as Miller, was released just before that and sent home on a U.S. government plane.

Fowle left a Bible in a local club hoping a North Korean would find it, which is considered a criminal offence in North Korea.

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Otto Warmbier Dies After Return From North Korea

Otto Warmbier, the 22-year-old student who was returned in an unconscious state last week from North Korea, died Monday, his family said.

"Surrounded by his loving family, Otto died today at 2:20 p.m.," his parents, Fred and Cindy Warmbier, said in a statement.

Otto Warmbier's doctors at University of Cincinnati Medical Center said last week that he had extensive brain damage dating back longer than a year. They said he was in a state of unresponsive wakefulness and wasn't aware of his surroundings.

The doctors who treated Warmbier said they had agreed not to speak about his outlook, but they had said he did not require help breathing.

The Warmbier family did not say how Otto died.

"We would like to thank the wonderful professionals at the University of Cincinnati Medical Center who did everything they could for Otto. Unfortunately, the awful torturous mistreatment our son received at the hands of the North Koreans ensured that no other outcome was possible beyond the sad one we experienced today," the family said in their statement.

Related: Three Americans Still Held by North Korea

"It would be easy at a moment like this to focus on all that we lost — future time that won't be spent with a warm, engaging, brilliant young man whose curiosity and enthusiasm for life knew no bounds," the family added.

"You can tell from the outpouring of emotion from the communities that he touched — Wyoming, Ohio and the University of Virginia to name just two — that the love for Otto went well beyond his immediate family."

Warmbier, a student at the University of Virginia, was detained in Pyongyang in January 2016 while on a tourist trip to North Korea. He was charged with committing a hostile act against the government after officials said he had tried to steal a propaganda banner from a hotel. After a one-hour trial, he was convicted and sentenced to 15 years' hard labor.

Warmbier's father, Fred, said his son was "brutalized" by the North Koreans.

Related: Otto Warmbier's Strange, Sad Trip

In their statement, the family said that "when Otto returned to Cincinnati late on June 13th he was unable to speak, unable to see and unable to react to verbal commands."

"He looked very uncomfortable — almost anguished. Although we would never hear his voice again, within a day the countenance of his face changed — he was at peace," they said. "He was home and we believe he could sense that."

Young Pioneer Tours, the Chinese travel agency that organized the 2015 trip to North Korea that included Warmbier, told NBC News on Monday night that it would no longer offer North Korean tours to U.S. citizens, saying, "The assessment of risk for Americans visiting North Korea has become too high."

In an emailed statement, the company called Warmbier's detention and treatment "appalling."

"Despite constant requests, we were denied any opportunity to meet him or anyone in contact with him in Pyongyang, only receiving assurances that he was fine," it said. "There has still been almost no information disclosed about his period in detention."

Politicians condemned North Korea.

"Melania and I offer our deepest condolences to the family of Otto Warmbier on his untimely passing," President Donald Trump said in a statement. "There is nothing more tragic for a parent than to lose a child in the prime of life.

"Otto's fate deepens my Administration's determination to prevent such tragedies from befalling innocent people at the hands of regimes that do not respect the rule of law or basic human decency," the president said. "The United States once again condemns the brutality of the North Korean regime as we mourn its latest victim."

Sen. John McCain, R-Arizona, a member of the Homeland Security and Armed Services committees, said Warmbier was "murdered by the Kim Jong-un regime."

"The United States of America cannot and should not tolerate the murder of its citizens by hostile powers," McCain said in a statement issued through his Washington office.

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson also had condolences for the Warmbier family.

"We hold North Korea accountable for Otto Warmbier's unjust imprisonment, and demand the release of three other Americans who have been illegally detained," Tillerson said in a statement.

Maggie Fox is a senior writer for NBC News and TODAY, covering health policy, science, medical treatments and disease.

• English News

Otto Warmbier death: What killed the US student who stole a poster in North Korea?

• Otto Warmbier was in North Korea as a tourist with a travelling group early last year
• The US student was accused of stealing a propaganda poster hanging from the hotel he was staying in
• Warmbier was sentenced to 15 years of hard labour in a North Korean prison
• The youth came back to the US in a coma after 17 months of detention in North Korea and died on Monday

Otto Warmbier, the 22-year-old college student who returned to the United States last week after 17 months of detention in North Korea, died on Monday.

Warmbier had suffered severe brain damage during his captivity and spent more than a year in coma. He was convicted of stealing a propaganda banner and sentenced to 15 years of hard labour in a North Korean prison, after a trial held in March 2016.

North Korean authorities said he fell ill from botulism soon after his trial and went into a coma after taking a sleeping pill. But doctors in the USA, who treated him following his arrival from North Korea, have dismissed the claim.

Politicians and celebrities in the US, including President Donald Trump, have accused North Korea of torturing and "murdering" Warmbier.

The 'serious' crime

Warmbier, who had been in North Korea as a tourist with a travelling group organised by Chinese company early last year, was accused of stealing a propaganda poster hanging from the wall of the hotel he was staying in.

In a confession made at a news conference in February 2016, Warmbier said a friend of his mother offered him a used car to steal the poster. However, the youth's father Fred Warmbier said the story was nonsensical and the confession was a forced one.

In most countries in a world, stealing a poster from your hotel doesn't even count as a crime. But as we have painfully learned, in a totalitarian regime it could get you 15 years of imprisonment. And in this case, it cost a bright young student his life.

What caused the death?

During his confession in February, Warmbier had showed no signs of injury or illness but by March, he slipped into a coma. Doctors in the US have denied North Korea's claim that thecoma was induced by botulism and sleeping pills, as tests did not reveal any evidence of this.

Neurologists found out that the youth had suffered extensive loss of brain tissue but the cause for this condition remains unknown. However, the pattern of the brain damage suggests a cardiopulmonary arrest.

The most common theory is that Warmbier was repeatedly beaten and torutured while in custody till he suffered a cardiopulmonary seizure. But his body displayed no obvious evidence physical trauma or bone fractures. Another possible explanation is that Warmbier was heavily medicated, causing irreversible brain damage.

Either way, the incident throws light on the brutal and inhuman abuse and torture methods put into use in North Korean prisons. The youth's father has accused North Korea of abusing his son. In a statement released this week, the Warmbier family said the North Korean government subjected their son to "awful torturous mistreatment" which led to his death.

We have already learned about the unimaginable torture methods deployed in North Korean prisons from some of the survivors. By sending Warmbier back to the US in a vegetative state, Kim Jong-un has proved that not only the leaders of countries that oppose him but also its ordinary citizens can expect no mercy from his regime.

• Otto Warmbier

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North Korea Must Apologise for American Tourist Warmbier’s Death

A public apology for death of American tourist Otto Warmbier is the best way for North Korea to show it did not plan this tragedy, keep over-zealous public security officials in line and improve the chances of any dialogue with the outside world.

The death of an American tourist just days after he was released from North Korean custody and repatriated to his home in Ohio has cast another long shadow over relations between Pyongyang and Washington. 22-year-old Otto Warmbier was in a coma when he departed the North Korean capital last week, and had apparently been in that condition for over a year. He appears to have been released and sent home only in order that he might die with his family around him, rather than in the unbending isolation of distant Pyongyang.

It is unclear how Warmbier ended up in a coma, and the entirely reasonable decision of his family to refuse an autopsy means that we probably never will. From a humanitarian standpoint it is of no consequence. Warmbier died at the hands of the North Korean government, and that is all we need to know. He was not sentenced to death at his Pyongyang show trial in 2016, he received a sentence of fifteen years’ hard labour, nominally for trying to steal an item bearing a propaganda slogan from his hotel on a New Year’s group tour. Yet he ended up dead all the same. There is no acceptable excuse for this. The fact that Warmbier did not actually die until after he got home to Ohio is spurious, useful only for permitting the North Korean authorities to keep his demise out of official statistics.

However, the question of what happened and who was responsible for it matters for other reasons. It is highly unlikely that the North Korean government had a strategic plan that included the death of Otto Warmbier. It is therefore helpful to understand the institutional dynamics that resulted in the tragedy, since these may afford international actors greater leverage in future attempts to negotiate with the North Korean government.

The removal of Kim Won-hong from his post as head of the Ministry of State Security in February this year potentially may be relevant here. The Ministry of State Security is the institution that punishes North Korea’s extremely long list of nominally “political” crimes. It manages the country’s notorious network of political prison camps, generating the sense of pervasive fear that buttresses the regime’s power.

Extraordinarily, a South Korean legislative committee revealed at the time of Kim’s removal intelligence that said he had been censured by the ruling party for human rights violations. This would ordinarily be an implausible rationale for removing the head of arguably the single most brutal institution in all of North Korea. Without human rights violations, the Ministry of State Security would cease to function. Unless, that is, the punishment of Kim was designed to send a message to third parties.

The Warmbier tragedy is reminiscent of the summer of 2008. Early one morning in July that year, a North Korean soldier shot and killed a South Korean tourist, 53-year-old housewife Park Wang-ja, who had stepped outside the permitted bounds of the Mt. Kumgang resort in the North Korean half of Kangwon province. Facing an untenable security situation, newly inaugurated South Korean President Lee Myung-bak immediately halted all inter-Korean tourist projects.

Then, as now, the actions of a member or members of the North Korean security services were utterly unacceptable. Yet, although a public apology for that incident was repeatedly demanded by the South Korean authorities, it was not forthcoming. Instead, more than a year later, then-leader Kim Jong-il only went so far as to promise Hyun Jeong-eun, the chair of the Hyundai Group, that the incident would not be repeated and that measures would be taken to ensure this. His words were deemed entirely inadequate by the South Korean people, horrified at the killing of Park for something as seemingly trivial as walking on the wrong side of a line.

This time, the North Korean government must make the right choice. If it was not Pyongyang’s intent to send Warmbier home in a coma, then a senior official in the North Korean regime should apologise for the actions of the state security service. This can be done through one of several existing channels for U.S.-Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) communication, for example North Korea’s office at the UN in New York.

This is not as implausible as it at first appears. In recent years, the North Korean government has occasionally shown itself capable of public displays of honesty, and even something akin to remorse. When a missile launch failed on 13 April 2012, the failure was reported in a comparatively accurate and timely manner. When an apartment building collapsed in Pyongyang in 2014, the head of the Ministry of People’s Security, North Korea’s police, Choe Pu-il went before the public to apologise for its incompetence. His symbolic contrition was reported by the daily publication of the ruling party, Rodong Sinmun.

An apology for Otto Warmbier’s death is more than the right and proper thing for the North Korean government to do. It could have additional positive effects. An apology from the top of the ruling party would help signal a desire to limit the political dominance of the Ministry of State Security within the North Korean institutional structure, the core of which also includes the Party Organisation and Guidance and Propaganda and Agitation departments. This is an appropriate step at a time when there is the latent possibility of a dialogue emerging in the coming months between South Korea and elements in the North Korean government who may be predisposed to a flexible approach to the outside world.

If Kim Jong-un and the senior elites who run the DPRK regime through its core institutions are at all interested in changing the framework of relations and conflict-prone dynamics of North East Asia, they know what must be done.

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• North Korea

Otto Warmbier’s Death May Spell the End of American Tourism to North Korea. Sadly, That’s About It

I t was supposed to be sassy, hinting at danger while assuring security. Though the promise of Young Pioneer Tours to offer “budget travel to destinations your mother would rather you stayed away from” today appears crass in the extreme.

The death on Monday of Otto Warmbier, who was detained in Pyongyang 17 months ago while on a group tour organized by Young Pioneer, has once again laid bare the dangers of voluntarily relinquishing your liberty — even temporarily — to a tyrannical regime with no diplomatic ties to Washington. And it has augmented existing calls for a blanket travel ban on U.S. citizens visiting the regime of Supreme Leader Kim Jong Un, which still has three Americans — Kim Dong-chul, Kim Sang-duk and Kim Hak-song — in detention.

“Otto’s fate deepens my Administration’s determination to prevent such tragedies from befalling innocent people at the hands of regimes that do not respect the rule of law or basic human decency,” said President Donald Trump in a statement . “The United States once again condemns the brutality of the North Korean regime as we mourn its latest victim.”

Warmbier, 22, had been serving a 15-year prison sentence with hard labor following his arrest on Jan. 2, 2016, for allegedly trying to steal a propaganda poster from a hotel in Pyongyang — deemed “a hostile act.” North Korean officials said he fell into a coma soon after his conviction upon being given a sleeping pill after contracting botulism, a potentially fatal bacterial illness. He was finally returned to the U.S. last week; however, American doctors said he suffered “severe injury to all regions of the brain.” Warmbier’s family said in a statement Monday that his condition was due to “awful torturous mistreatment” during detention.

“There is no excuse for any civilized nation to have kept his condition secret and denied him top notch medical care for so long,” Warmbier’s father, Fred, told a press conference.

Read More: Why Otto Warmbier Was Released From North Korea

Warmbier’s treatment and death has served as a wake-up call to both those who join and organize tours to North Korea. In an emotional statement, Young Pioneers Tours said : “The way his detention was handled was appalling, and a tragedy like this must never be repeated … Considering these facts and this tragic outcome we will no longer be organizing tours for U.S. citizens to North Korea.” Uri Tours, a U.S.-based tour company also offering trips to North Korea, said it was “reviewing its position on [North Korea] travel for American citizens.”

They may not have a choice. Although the State Department already warns in strong terms against North Korean travel, last month Republican and Democratic U.S. congressmen introduced a bill that would ban American tourists from traveling to North Korea as tourists and require special permission for other visits, citing at least 17 Americans detained by the regime over the last decade. “With increased tensions in North Korea, the danger that Americans will be detained for political reasons is greater than ever,” Democrat Adam Schiff and Republican Joe Wilson said in a statement.

Since taking office, Trump has turned the screws on the Kim regime, persuading China — the source of nearly all North Korean trade — to cut off revenue and in April dispatching the Carl Vinson U.S. Navy strike group to the Korean peninsular in a show of force. Trump has warned of a “major, major conflict” with North Korea should it continue its nuclear program. The regime has conducted five nuclear tests to date and 16 missile tests this year alone.

Amid the heightening tensions, there was clearly a political aspect to Otto’s continued detention, as the regime has previously managed to wrangle visits from top U.S. figures — most recently former presidents Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter — to secure the release of Americans detained. The Obama administration’s tactic of “strategic patience” — refusing to engage with the regime while squeezing it financially through sanctions — has by and large been kept in place by Trump, despite his administration’s declaration that it would break with the policy. This meant no diplomatic thawing was on the cards for Warmbier; that is, until diplomats finally learned about his failing health.

Speaking to journalists upon his son’s return, Fred Warmbier thanked the Trump administration and laid blame on the Obama White House for not doing enough to secure his son’s freedom.

“Earlier this year Cindy and I decided the time for ‘strategic patience’ was over,” he said, praising new State Department Special Representative for North Korea Policy Joseph Yun, who traveled to Pyongyang June 12 to secure Warmbier’s release, for his “aggressively pursued resolution of the situation.” Asked whether the Obama administration could have done more, Fred Warmbier replied, “I think the results speak for themselves.”

The fact remains that Warmbier may still be alive today if, as may now happen, Americans had been prohibited from traveling to North Korea. But it is also true that stronger diplomatic relations between Washington and Pyongyang would have aided in securing an earlier release.

“It’s just very sad,” says Prof. Stephan Haggard, a Korea expert at the UC San Diego School of Global Policy and Strategy. “One channel is to shut down the tourism. But I’m not sure it will have much effect in terms of the larger strategy.”

Read More: Moon Jae In, the Man Who Wants to Negotiate With North Korea

Other than implementing a travel ban, which would close off a not insignificant income stream for Pyongyang, it’s unclear what more the U.S. could do to gain some sense of justice for the Warmbier family. North Korea is already one the world’s most heavily sanctioned countries, and any new economic measures would be symbolic rather than substantive. A more fitting tribute would be to secure the release of the three other Americans held by the regime before a similar tragedy befalls them, as Secretary of State Rex Tillerson demanded in a statement Monday.

Washington could impose secondary sanctions on individuals and companies organizing tours to North Korea, many of which are based in China, the U.K. and U.S., though that would be a legal minefield. Such a move would also contradict recent developments indicating a move toward engagement with the North, especially after last month’s election of liberal South Korean President Moon Jae-in.

“What can the U.S. and its allies do after Otto’s death?” asked one top Korea-watcher, who requested anonymity out of respect for the Warmbier family. “The brutal reality is nothing.”

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Republican presidential candidate former President Donald Trump speaks at a campaign rally at Georgia State University in Atlanta, Aug. 3, 2024. (AP)

Donald Trump released prisoners, dropped charges when negotiating release of Americans held abroad

If your time is short.

Former President Donald Trump’s administration released prisoners held by the U.S. government in exchange for freeing Americans held abroad. 

In 2017, the Trump administration agreed to pay $2 million to North Korea for the release of a U.S. citizen detained there, but a White House official said the money was never paid.

After a historic prisoner swap Aug. 1 among the U.S., Russia and other countries, former President Donald Trump questioned the details and compared it with deals he made during his presidency.

"So when are they going to release the details of the prisoner swap with Russia? How many people do we get versus them? Are we also paying them cash?" Trump wrote Aug. 1 on Truth Social . "I got back many hostages, and gave the opposing Country NOTHING — and never any cash. To do so is bad precedent for the future." 

Three American citizens were among the released : U.S. Marine Paul Whelan, who was imprisoned in Russia for almost six years; Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich, who had been imprisoned in Russia for more than a year; and Alsu Kurmasheva, a Radio Liberty journalist detained in October 2023.

In exchange for the prisoners held in Russia, the U.S. and other countries released eight prisoners , including Vadim Krasikov , who was serving a lifetime sentence in Germany for murder. National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said the U.S. did not exchange money in the deal.

Trump’s administration released prisoners held by the U.S. government in exchange for having other nations free Americans held abroad. 

"There is ALWAYS a quid pro quo in hostage diplomacy, as this issue is known," said Anthony Wanis-St. John, an American University associate professor of peace, human rights and cultural relations who specializes in conflict zone negotiations. "It can be material, it can be a reciprocal release, or a political concession that is kept secret or is symbolic."

Here are some examples of prisoner exchanges and their terms during Trump’s administration.

In 2019, the U.S. secured the release of Xiyue Wang, a U.S. citizen who had been held prisoner in Iran since 2016. Wang was a Princeton University graduate student conducting doctoral research when he was arrested in Tehran and imprisoned on espionage charges.

In exchange for Wang’s freedom, the U.S. agreed to release Masoud Soleimani, an Iranian scientist who was arrested and charged with violating American trade sanctions against Iran. The Justice Department had dropped the charges and Soleimani was expected to be released from prison before the exchange took place, The New York Times reported .

In 2020, the Trump administration negotiated the release of Michael White, a U.S. Navy veteran who was imprisoned in 2018 after traveling to Iran to visit a woman he met online. White was serving a 10-year sentence after Iranian authorities convicted him of insulting Iran’s supreme leader and posting private information online, The Associated Press reported .

As part of this deal, the U.S. agreed to release Matteo Taerri, also known as Majid Taheri, an Iranian American doctor who had violated U.S. sanctions on Iran. Taerri pleaded guilty and served several months in jail before he was released on bond. The Justice Department dropped its charges against Taerri.

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On Oct. 14, 2020, the Trump administration secured the release of two Americans whom Houthi rebels in Yemen had held captive: Sandra Loli and Mikael Gidada. The remains of Bilal Fateen, an American who died in captivity, were repatriated.

In exchange, more than 200 Houthi militants returned from Oman to Yemen, according to news reports . The Trump administration did not link the two returns as an exchange, but The Wall Street Journal reported that U.S. and Saudi Arabian officials confirmed it was.

"We extend our sincerest thanks to Sultan Haitham bin Tariq of Oman and King Salman of Saudi Arabia for their efforts to secure the release of our citizens," National Security Adviser Robert O’Brien said then .

In June 2017, a medical team and a State Department representative returned University of Virginia student Otto Warmbier to the U.S., after he had been detained in North Korea for more than 17 months. Warmbier was in a coma , and a few days later, he died .

On April 25, 2019, The Washington Post reported that North Korea billed the U.S. $2 million to cover Warmbier’s hospital care. The U.S. envoy sent to retrieve Warmbier signed an agreement to pay the bill under Trump’s orders, the Post reported.

"We did not pay money for our great Otto. There was no money paid. There was a fake news report that money was paid," Trump said April 26, 2019.

But on April 28, 2019, White House National Security Adviser John Bolton said on "Fox News Sunday" that "it appears" North Korea did demand money from the U.S. He said "that is what I’m told" when asked whether the U.S. envoy signed a document agreeing to pay the money to get Warmbier back.

However, Bolton, who was not working in the Trump administration at the time of Warmbier’s release, said the U.S. "absolutely" did not pay North Korea any money for the release.

Trump said in hostage releases, "(I) gave the opposing country NOTHING — and never any cash." 

Multiple times during Trump’s administration, the U.S. government released prisoners it held in exchange for freeing Americans held abroad.

In one instance, the U.S. agreed to pay money to North Korea for the release of a U.S. citizen, but a White House official said the money was never sent.

Trump’s statement contains an element of truth because he never gave cash in exchange for Americans’ release. However, the statement ignores critical facts about the terms the U.S. agreed to in these exchanges.

We rate the statement Mostly False. PolitiFact Researcher Caryn Baird contributed to this report.

Read About Our Process

The Principles of the Truth-O-Meter

Our Sources

Email interview with Anthony Wanis-St. John, an American University associate professor of peace, human rights and cultural relations who specializes in conflict zone negotiations, Aug. 5, 2024

Interview with Steve Swerdlow, associate professor of political science and international relations at University of Southern California who specializes in human rights law, Aug. 2, 2024

Donald Trump, Truth Social post , Aug. 1, 2024

Donald Trump, Truth Social post , May 23, 2024

C-SPAN, " Former President Trump and Senator Vance Campaign in Atlanta ," Aug. 3, 2024

CNN, " After emotional family reunions, the 3 Americans freed in a historic prisoner swap face a challenging road ahead ," Aug. 3, 2024

CNN, " Who was freed in major prisoner swap between Russia and the West? ," Aug. 2, 2024

The Associated Press, " Putin called him a patriot. But who is Vadim Krasikov, a Russian released in the mass prisoner swap? ," Aug. 1, 2024

NPR, " American Student Xiyue Wang Freed In U.S.-Iran Prisoner Swap ," Dec. 7, 2019

The New York Times, " In Prisoner Swap, Iran Frees American Held Since 2016 ," Dec. 7, 2019

U.S. Embassy in Switzerland and Liechtenstein, " Statement from President Donald J. Trump on the Release of Xiyue Wang from Iran ," Dec. 7, 2019

The Trump White House, " Statement from the Press Secretary Regarding the Release of Two Hostages from the Taliban ," Nov. 19, 2019

The Associated Press, " Pompeo calls prisoner exchange a 'hopeful sign' ," Nov. 19, 2019

The Associated Press, " Detained US Navy veteran freed by Iran as part of deal ," June 4, 2020

Donald Trump, X post , June 4, 2020

CNN, " Michael White: US Navy veteran detained in Iran has been released, source says ," June 4, 2020

CBS News, " Yemen's Houthi rebels release 2 American hostages, remains of a 3rd, in a swap ," Oct. 15, 2020

The Associated Press, " Yemen’s warring sides kick off largest prisoner swap to date ," Oct. 15, 2020

The Wall Street Journal, " Two Americans Held Hostage by Iran-Backed Forces in Yemen Freed in Trade ," Oct. 14, 2020

Trump White House, X post , Oct. 14, 2020

CNN, " How the US secured Otto Warmbier’s release from North Korea ," June 13, 2017

The Trump White House, " Statement by President Donald J. Trump on the Passing of Otto Warmbier ," June 19, 2017

Fox News, " John Bolton reacts to accusations from Iran's foreign minister ," April 28, 2019

C-SPAN, " President Trump White House Departure ," April 26, 2019

The Washington Post, " Biden, Trump exchange jabs as Russia prisoner swap turns political ," Aug. 1, 2024

FactCheck.org, " Trump Swapped Prisoners, Too ," Dec. 16, 2022

CNN, " Fact check: Trump, who approved multiple prisoner exchanges, falsely claims he gave up ‘nothing’ to get Americans back ," Aug. 2, 2022

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No North Korea for You: Travel Ban Extended for Another Year

The U.S. government has extended its travel ban on North Korea for another year.

On the 7th, the U.S. Department of State announced through the Federal Register that, without special permission, U.S. passport holders cannot visit North Korea until August 31, 2025.

The State Department explained that there are serious risks for U.S. citizens and nationals being arrested and detained for long periods in North Korea, which poses an immediate threat to the physical safety of Americans.

The travel ban was first imposed in September 2017 following the detention of American student Otto Warmbier in North Korea. Warmbier returned to the U.S. in a coma and passed away just a week later. Since then, the U.S. has renewed the travel ban annually.

The State Department also specified the legal basis for the travel ban. According to this regulation, the Secretary of State can restrict travel to countries or regions at war with the U.S., experiencing military hostilities, or posing an immediate threat to American travelers’ health or physical safety.

Under the travel ban, Americans wishing to visit North Korea for special purposes must obtain special approval from the State Department.

Read more: U.S. Sends USS Abraham Lincoln to the Middle East Amid Iran Retaliation Threats

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North Korea to open border for foreign tourists in December 2024, tour operators say

North korea is readying to reopen borders to bigger groups of foreign tourists after years of strict covid border controls..

North Korea will resume international tourism to its northeastern city of Samjiyon in December, and possibly the rest of the country, tour companies said on Wednesday.

The move is a sign that the reclusive country is readying to reopen borders to bigger groups of foreign tourists after years of strict Covid border controls.

"We have received confirmation from our local partner that tourism to Samjiyon and likely the rest of the country will officially resume in December 2024," the Beijing-based Koryo Tours said on its website.

International flights in and out of North Korea resumed last year and a small group of Russian tourists flew to North Korea for a private tour in February. Top foreign officials, including Russian President Vladimir Putin in June, have been visiting the country.

But North Korea has not been fully open to international tourists since 2020.

"Having waited for over four years to make this announcement, Koryo Tours is very excited for the opening of North Korean tourism once again," the firm said, adding its local partner would confirm itineraries and dates in coming weeks.

North Korea has been building what it called a "socialist utopia" in Samjiyon, a city near the Chinese border, and "a model of highly-civilised mountain city" with new apartments, hotels, a ski resort and commercial, cultural and medical facilities.

Leader Kim Jong Un in July sacked or demoted some senior officials for their "irresponsible" handling of his flagship Samjiyon project.

Another travel agency, KTG Tours, also announced that tourists would be able to go to Samjiyon from this winter.

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North Korea to open border for foreign tourists in December, tour operators say

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Reporting by Ju-min Park; Editing by Alex Richardson

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Jamaica declares southern state of emergency after Sunday night killings

Jamaican Prime Minister Andrew Holness on Wednesday declared a state of emergency in the Caribbean nation's southern Clarendon parish after eight people were killed in separate gun attacks on Sunday night, including a seven-year-old boy.