The president reportedly approved a $2 million payment for imprisoned student Otto Warmbier’s medical costs before he was returned to the U.S., where he later died.
In December of 2015, Otto Warmbier, an American college student who had just turned 22, traveled to North Korea for a five-day New Year’s tour. On December 31, he and the other Americans in his tour group celebrated New Year’s Eve the traditional way--with lots of alcohol. The drinking continued when they returned to their hotel. In the early hours of January 1, 2016, an intoxicated Warmbier allegedly tried to (but did not actually) steal a propaganda poster proclaiming “Let’s arm ourselves strongly with Kim Jong-il’s patriotism!” from a staff-only area of the hotel.
On January 2, 2016, North Korean guards came and took Warmbier away while he was waiting at the airport for his flight out of the country. Officials told the rest of the group that Warbier was “ very sick and has been taken to the hospital.” In reality, he was held for six weeks for “a hostile act against the state.” Then Warmbier was trotted out in public to read a prepared statement “confessing” that he tried to steal the poster--and that the “United States administration” had “lured” and “manipulated” him into doing it.
On March 16, 2016, North Korea formally convicted Warmbier for theft and sentenced him to 15 years of hard labor. Over a year later, on June 6, 2017, North Korea announced that he had fallen into a coma after supposedly contracting botulism in March of 2016. A week later, on June 13, 2017, North Korea released Warmbier on “humanitarian grounds.” Physicians concluded that he had extensive brain damage. They found no signs of botulism. Warmbier remained in a persistent vegetative state until he died on June 19, 2017, after his grieving parents requested the removal of his feeding tube.
It turns out that the “humanitarian grounds” upon which North Korea agreed to release Warmbier included accepting a bill for $2 million for his medical care. Trump personally directed the U.S. officials retrieving Warmbier from North Korea to sign and approve the bill. But, in the words of the Trump administration: “It didn’t matter, we were not going to pay it.” Trump himself recently denied that the U.S. ever paid any part of that bill:
“No money was paid to North Korea for Otto Warmbier, not two Million Dollars, not anything else.”
Believe it or not, Trump is probably telling the truth this time. After all, he’s very good at promising to pay bills and then not paying them.
