In June 2017, Fred and Cindy Warmbier, parents of Otto Warmbier, were worried. They hadn’t heard from Otto for a year and a half since he got arrested by North Korea during a budget tour. Otto, a 21-year-old student at the University of Virginia, was accused of stealing a propaganda poster and confessing on TV.
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 this, he was sentenced to 15 years of hard labor. His parents were so worried that they thought he might be dead. On Otto’s 22nd birthday, Cindy sent balloons toward North Korea, hoping to reach her son.
Otto Warmbier, a student from the University of Virginia went to North Korea on December 29, 2015, when he was 21 years old. He was from Cincinnati, Ohio, and liked traveling to different places like Israel, Cuba, Ecuador, and Europe. He planned to study in Hong Kong in early 2016 but decided to go on a guided tour to North Korea with a company called Young Pioneer Tours. The company’s slogan was “destinations your mother would rather you stayed away from.”
Otto flew from Beijing to Pyongyang for a five-day tour during the New Year’s Eve holiday. He celebrated the holiday by drinking with his group in Pyongyang’s Kim Il-sung Square. At about 2 am on New Year’s Day, North Korea announced that Otto tried to steal a poster from a hotel where he stayed and the next day he got arrested at the airport, and his group was told he was sick and in a hospital.
North Korea’s news agency said Otto was arrested for being against the country. In a press conference on February 29, 2016, Otto confessed to trying to take a poster with Kim Jong-il’s message. Stealing or damaging things related to Kim Jong-un is a big crime in North Korea. It’s not clear if Otto confessed on his own or was forced, but many people thought he was under pressure.
North Korea’s supreme court found him guilty of a crime that, according to them, followed the US government’s unfriendly policy. He was given a 15-year prison sentence with hard labor.
In June, the Warmbiers were hoping for news about a secret mission by the State Department to free Otto. Former US President Donald Trump had ordered a team to go to North Korea after hearing that Otto was unconscious. There was no guarantee he would be released, so everyone was anxious. At 8:35 A.M., Secretary of State Rex Tillerson called the president to say Otto was on a plane. The president said, “Take care of Otto.” Senator Rob Portman then called the Warmbiers to say Otto would be home that night.
Before they rescued Otto, Portman told Cindy that according to the North Koreans, Otto had been unconscious for months. However, nobody knew exactly how bad the injury was. Cindy asked about Otto’s health condition, and Portman said it seemed like he had severe brain damage.
Cindy told the news that she thought this might mean Otto was either asleep or in a medically induced coma. The Warmbiers, who were hopeful and patriotic, believed that with American healthcare and their love, Otto could become the lively person he used to be before he left.
Fred was on an airplane when something strange happened. He heard a weird howling sound while going up the stairs. When he went inside, he found his son, Otto, tied to a stretcher, looking very different. Otto’s body was twisted, his hair was cut short, and he had a tube in his nose. His dad hugged him, but Otto seemed lost and couldn’t stop making strange sounds.
Later, Paramedics took Otto to the hospital, and his mother was there with him. Doctors couldn’t figure out what caused Otto’s strange condition. North Korea and the U.S. had different stories. North Korea said it was because of sickness and medicine, but many American doctors didn’t believe that. Some American officials said Otto was beaten, and his parents said on TV that their son was tortured. Otto’s story became a way to make people emotional about going to war, according to the New York Times.
What Happened To Otto Warmbier
North Korea explained that Otto Warmbier got sick with a rare illness and fell into a coma, but US doctors couldn’t find any signs of that illness in his body, They said he was in a state where he seemed awake but wasn’t responsive, and they didn’t know what caused a serious brain injury.
Heong Seong-jang, an analyst in South Korea thought North Korea sent Otto back to the US before he died to avoid more questions and a worse situation if they had returned his dead body.
His parents said: “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 dentists who took care of Otto Warmbier revealed horrific things they noticed in his post-mortem dental images. The first dentist, Dr. Murray Dock, who treated Otto when he was a child, remembers him having straight teeth. However, after looking at pictures of Otto’s teeth after he returned from North Korea, Dr. Dock noticed significant changes, like the bottom four middle teeth moving backward. Dr. Dock thought this kind of change is usually caused by some kind of impact, not a natural thing. (Source)
The second dentist, Todd Williams, who treated Otto as an adult, initially said Otto had excellent teeth. But after looking at pictures of Otto’s teeth after he returned from North Korea, Dr. Williams noticed that some of the bottom teeth were positioned differently, towards the back of the mouth. Dr. Williams believed some force was applied to Otto’s teeth after his last appointment in 2015, and there was also evidence of bone loss, which is unusual for a healthy young dental patient.
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A doctor named Daniel Kanter, who took care of Otto Warmbier when he came back to the University of Cincinnati Medical Center, declared that Otto died because his brain was severely damaged. This happened because he didn’t get enough oxygen, which occurred when blood flow to his brain stopped for around five to 20 minutes. The doctor thought it’s unlikely that Otto had immediate help from medical staff when this happened.
It remains unclear how Otto Warmbier was deprived of oxygen.
The director of a hospital in Pyongyang, North Korea, mentioned in a report that Otto was doing forced labor as part of his punishment before he was sent back to the United States. Some American doctors, according to a report from North Korea’s official news agency, said Otto died from torture, claiming his teeth and gum were damaged by physical force.
Shortly after Otto Warmbier returned to the U.S., but before he died, a senior American official said the United States had obtained intelligence reports stating that Otto Warmbier had been beaten repeatedly, according to a New York Times article.
After Otto Warmbier passed away, a coroner in Ohio named Dr. Lakshmi Kode Sammarco found no proof that he had been tortured. The coroner mentioned in a press conference that there was no sign of harm to his teeth, and the official report stated that his teeth were natural and in good condition.
According to the report by Dr. Gretel Stephens, who works for the coroner’s office, Otto Warmbier’s cause of death was complications from brain damage due to a lack of oxygen more than a year before he died. However, the manner of his death was labeled as “undetermined.”
Some Americans who were detained in North Korea have shared that they faced tough treatment but weren’t physically tortured. Kenneth Bae, a Christian missionary, and Jeffrey Fowle, a father from Ohio, both mentioned they were not physically forced but experienced psychological tactics during their detention.
As a response to Otto Warmbier’s death, the U.S. imposed a travel ban on North Korea in June 2017.
In this interview with Asian Boss, Chul-eun Lee, a former high-ranking North Korean government official who moved to South Korea in 2016 explains what was happening in North Korea after Otto was arrested by the totalitarian regime. During the interview, he talks about his time working, where his colleagues dealt with Otto Warmbier. American doctors couldn’t find clear signs that Warmbier was tortured.
Lee states he worked in the offices where his colleagues handled Warmbier. American doctors found no clear signs he was tortured. He is 80% sure North Korea poisoned 22-year-old Otto after making him publicly admit to being a spy. In the interview he touches on the Otto Warmbier case twice, first suggesting that he was not “tortured” in the standard methodical way but rather was frequently beaten by guards out of frustration at communication issues.
Later, he suggests that Warmbier’s vegetative state upon return to the USA may have been caused by a discreet drugging aimed at ensuring he was unable to communicate the details of his captivity. He said the poison was undetectable and that N. Korea had developed and stockpiled enough chemical weapons to kill everyone on Earth. The whole video is interesting as it delves into how the Kim regime in North Korea operates.
