Otto Warmbier, a University of Virginia student visiting North Korea as a tourist, was imprisoned in January 2016. North Korea state media said he was sentenced to 15 years of hard labor for trying to steal an item bearing a propaganda slogan from his hotel.
HE DIED 6 DAYS LATER
An invoice was handed to State Department envoy Joseph Yun hours before Warmbier, 22, was flown out of Pyongyang in a coma on June 13, 2017. Warmbier died six days later. The US envoy, who was sent to retrieve Warmbier, signed an agreement to pay the medical bill on instructions passed down from Trump, the Washington Post reported, citing two unidentified people familiar with the situation.
The bill was sent to the Treasury Department and remained unpaid through 2017, the Post reported. Trump has denied paying North Korea to release hostages. “I got back our hostages; I never paid them anything,” he said at a September news conference.
“NORTH KOREA IS RESPONSIBLE FOR THE DEATH”
Warmbier’s parents issued a sharp statement in March after Trump said he believed North Korean leader Kim Jong Un’s assertion not to have known how their son was treated. The US president also praised Kim’s leadership after their second summit collapsed in February in Hanoi when the two sides failed to reach a deal for Pyongyang to give up its nuclear weapons.
Trump said later he held North Korea responsible for the young man’s death.
A US court in December ordered North Korea to pay $501 million in damages for the torture and death of Warmbier.