At least two Americans imprisoned in North Korea have attempted suicide. To revisit this article, select My Account, thenView saved stories. FILE - Dr. Lakshmi Kode Sammarco speaks during a news conference regarding the circumstances surrounding the death of 22-year-old University of Virginia undergraduate student Otto Warmbier who was serving a 15-year prison term in North Korea, Sept. 27, 2017. By then, Warmbier had served more than a year of hard. 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 uncomfortablealmost anguished. But within a day, the countenance of his face changed, the Warmbiers said. But what happened to Warmbierthe American college student who was sent home brain-damaged from North Koreais even more shocking than anyone knew. 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. But the North Koreans were still not ready to release Otto. Otto became a symbol used to build a case for war on emotional grounds, the New York Times editorial board wrote. However, a local newspaper in the US has disputed the allegations made by the Warmbiers. But as he chatted with his guides, he knew his informal offers were being conveyed up the chain. So, shortly after Christmas 2015, Otto met the other Young Pioneers in China and boarded an old Soviet jet to Pyongyang. Fred and Cindy had so despaired during their long vigil that at one point they allegedly told friends that Otto had probably been killed. The lack of physical evidence of beatings was widely publicized. 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. 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. 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. I remember Otto as having straight teeth without any significant misalignment or crowding, said Dr. Murray Dock, a pediatric dentist in Cincinnati, Ohio, who was Otto Warmbiers dentist between 2011 and 2013. In Pyongyang, rather, Bergman was squired around for four days to many of the same sites that Otto had touristedfrom the U.S.S. 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. FILE - Family members watch as Kenneth Bae, right, freed during a top-secret mission, talks to reporters after he arrived at Joint Base Lewis-McChord, Washington, Nov. 8, 2014. But the coroner's postmortem examination of Otto Warmbier did not indicate the young man's teeth had been disfigured. The KCNA report said several American doctors reportedly involved in the health checkup and treatment of Warmbier submitted medical observation to a federal district court in Washington, D.C., on October 10 to the effect that he had died of torture, alleging that they had concluded his teeth were dislocated and his gum bone damaged by physical force from outside.. 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?. 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One of their last glimpses of him had been from a televised news conference in Pyongyang, during which their boya sweet, brainy 21-year-old scholarship student at the University of Virginiaconfessed 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. When Trump learned of Otto's condition, he doubled down on the order for Yun to rush to Pyongyang and bring Otto home. Bergman, a former Israeli paratrooper with a therapist's sensitive demeanor, was chosen as the emissary, as Richardson would draw too much attention. However, Yun kept butting his head against the North Koreans' argument: Otto committed this crime, so why should he escape due process? 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. North Korea has denied mistreating Warmbier, sentenced to 15 years of hard labor in March 2016 for allegedly stealing a propaganda poster two months earlier. Christy Lee and Ahn So-young contributed to this report which originated on VOA Korean. The once vital young man was severely brain-damaged. The likelihood that his brain damage happened immediately after the sentencing, however, raises the possibility that he may have attempted suicide. In the complaint filed in April, the Warmbiers, who live in Wyoming, Ohio, claimed their son had been intentionally beaten. 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. 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. Negotiations continued into the night. UC Health doctors said in June that Warmbier was in a state of "unresponsive wakefulness" and had suffered a "severe neurological injury" of uncertain cause. Otto was born on December 12, 1994, in Cincinnati, Ohio, in the United States. At a top-ranked Ohio high school, he boasted the second-best grades. 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. The team knew they would soon have to face the heartbreak of turning Otto over to his parents. Copyright 2023 CBS Interactive Inc. All rights reserved. The Untold Story of Otto Warmbier. Local residents held signs of support at the airport. 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. The sleek luxury plane taxied to some hangars, where the Warmbiers waited nearby. 2023 BBC. 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. According to his dentist, Warmbier's lower teeth were positioned toward the back of his mouth, indicating that pressure was applied to his teeth after May 27, 2015. Weeks later North Korea released a video of Warmbier confessing in great detail to the theft and begging for forgiveness. 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. GQ may earn a portion of sales from products that are purchased through our site as part of our Affiliate Partnerships with retailers. 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. 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. However, the coroner's report says, "the teeth are . The North Koreans asked Flueckiger to sign a report testifying that Otto had been well cared for in the hospital. Fred Warmbier, Otto's father, said "it looked like someone had taken pliers and tried to rearrange his bottom teeth" when he described the state the 22-year-old was in when he returned to the U.S . Otto Frederick Warmbier was a college student from the US who was abducted in North Korea.Here, I will discuss Where to Watch Otto Warmbier Documentary. It was only later that a member of Ottos tour group would wonder about the two-hour window that none of us can account for [Otto].. Despite how Trump and his administration boosted the narrative that Otto was physically tortured, however, the evidence was not clear-cut. Instead, a red-alert situation confronted him. US student Otto Warmbier was sentenced to 15 years in a North Korean labor camp in 2016. Both sides of Otto's brain had suffered simultaneously, meaning it had been starved of oxygen. 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. 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. Instead, Pence invited Fred Warmbier to sit with him in the VIP box at the opening ceremony, not ten feet from Kim's sister. Sadness flooded him. What kind of nightmare did he endure while in captivity? The international community is appealing for all incendiary rhetoric to be toned down. Fred approached his son and hugged him. Sadly, he passed away on June 19, 2017, at the age of 22. She also pleaded with people not to go to North Korea, saying it was "playing into" Pyongyang's propaganda. 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. The paper quoted the Hamilton County coroner as saying Mr Warmbier's teeth were "natural and in good repair" and that he appeared to have died from brain damage caused by a lack of oxygen. He had two children and struggled to imagine one in such a state. "The teeth are natural and in good repair," the report said, and his . 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. 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. They made it clear they could only convey our offers, Richardson recalled. This was the period of fire and fury, and of Trump and Kim comparing who had the bigger & more powerful nuclear buttons. In fact, I discovered that the manner of Otto's injury was not as black-and-white as people were encouraged to believe. Financial losses incurred by Otto Warmbier and his parents are estimated to range between $1,993,386 and $6,038,308, according to an expert statement submitted to the court by James V. Koch, an economics professor at Old Dominion University. 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