CINCINNATI -- There's been little public word about what has happened to an American college student detained in North Korea a year ago this month.
North Korea announced on Jan. 22, 2016, it had detained Otto Warmbier, a 21-year-old University of Virginia student from suburban Cincinnati, earlier that month for what it said was anti-state crime. Warmbier, who had visited North Korea with a tour group, was sentenced in March to 15 years in prison at hard labor after a televised tearful public confession to trying to steal a propaganda banner. Warmbier said he wanted to take the banner home for a woman in Ohio who wanted to hang it in her church.
The State Department calls the sentence "unduly harsh," and spokesman John Kirby said in a statement last week in response to an Associated Press query that the department continues to work for Warmbier's "earliest possible release." Noting that he has gone through North Korea's criminal process and been detained more than a year, he said: "We continue to urge the [Democratic People's Republic of Korea] to pardon him and grant him special amnesty and immediate release on humanitarian grounds."
Already at odds over its nuclear tests and missile launches, North Korea in July called new U.S. sanctions aimed directly at Kim Jong Un and other top leaders for human-rights abuses the equivalent of declaring war, and diplomats inquiring about Warmbier and a Korean-American also being held have been told they were being treated under "wartime law." It's not clear what that means, although it could imply tougher treatment. The United States doesn't have diplomatic relations with North Korea.
Warmbier's parents said after his public confession last February that they hadn't been able to communicate with him, and his father, Fred, expressed hope his son's "sincere apology" would persuade North Korea to allow him to come home. The statement was released through the University of Virginia.
President Donald Trump has said he will push China to exert its influence on North Korea to bring it into line, but Trump also said during his presidential campaign that he would be willing to meet with Kim.
"It's obviously very terrible for the family and for Mr. Warmbier," said Walter Clemens, a professor emeritus at Boston University who has written two books on North Korea. "But he could conceivably be the bridge for establishing a rapprochement between the United States and North Korea."
Information for this article was contributed by Matthew Pennington and Kim Tong-hyung of The Associated Press.
A Section on 01/23/2017