The North Korean mission to the United Nations was not available for comment on Monday.
US President Donald Trump issued a statement offering condolences to the
Warmbier family and denouncing “the brutality of the North Korean
regime as we mourn its latest victim.”
The president drew criticism in May when he said he would be “honored” to meet North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.
“If it would be appropriate for me to meet with him, I would absolutely,
I would be honored to do it,” Trump said in an interview. “If it’s
under the, again, under the right circumstances. But I would do that.”
The student’s father, Fred Warmbier, said last week that his son had
been “brutalized and terrorized” by the Pyongyang government and that
the family disbelieved North Korea’s story that his son had fallen into a
coma after contracting botulism and being given a sleeping pill.
Doctors who examined Otto Warmbier after his release said there was no sign of botulism in his system.
Warmbier was freed after the US State Department’s special envoy on
North Korea, Joseph Yun, traveled to Pyongyang and demanded the
student’s release on humanitarian grounds, capping a flurry of secret
diplomatic contacts, a US official said last week.
Tensions between the United States and North Korea have been heightened
by dozens of North Korean missile launches and two nuclear bomb tests
since the beginning of last year in defiance of UN Security Council
resolutions. Pyongyang has also vowed to develop a nuclear-tipped
intercontinental ballistic missile capable of hitting the US mainland.
China, North Korea’s main ally, lamented Warmbier’s death.
“It really is a tragedy. I hope that North Korea and the United States
can properly handle the issue,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng
Shuang told a regular press briefing.
Asked if the death would have an impact on high-level US-China talks on
Wednesday likely to focus on North Korea, Geng said China “remains
committed to resolving the Korean Peninsula issue through dialogue and
consultation”.
Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said the United States holds North
Korea accountable for Warmbier’s “unjust imprisonment” and demanded the
release of three other US citizens still held by Pyongyang –
Korean-Americans Tony Kim, Kim Dong Chul and Kim Hak Song.
Offering condolence to the Warmbiers, South Korean President Moon Jae-in
urged Pyongyang to swiftly return the foreign detainees including six
South Koreans.
A spokesman for the family of one South Korean detainee sentenced to
hard labor for life for spying in 2013 said the Warmbier’s death was
“shocking and upsetting”.
“I thought American citizens might be treated better than South Koreans
but looking at Otto’s case it is shocking. It also concerns us even more
regarding the missionary Kim’s situation,” Joo Dong-sik, spokesman for
the family of South Korean missionary Kim Jung-wook who remains in
custody, told Reuters.
Korean-American missionary Kenneth Bae, who spent two years in North
Korean captivity before his release in 2014, expressed sadness at
Warmbier’s death, calling it an “outrage”.
“I cannot understand what the Warmbier family is feeling right now. But I
mourn with them, and I pray for them,” Bae said in a statement.
Young Pioneer Tours, the group with which Warmbier traveled to North
Korea, will no longer be organizing tours for US citizens to the
isolated country, Troy Collings, a company director, said in a
statement.
Two of the other largest agencies to take Western tourists to North Korea also said they were reconsidering taking US tourists.
Uri Tours, which is based in New Jersey, said on its website it was
“reviewing its position on DPRK travel for American citizens”. DPRK is
short for the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, North Korea’s
official title.
Beijing-based Koryo Tours said it was also reviewing whether or not to take US citizens on tours to North Korea.
“This young man did not deserve the disproportionate sentence given to him,” the company said in a statement.
“What followed was a disgrace, which we categorically condemn – from the
paucity of information provided during his detention, and the worrying
lack of consular visits, to the distressing and horrifying condition in
which he was returned to his family.” – Reuters