Otto Warmbier has ‘Severe Neurological Injury,’ ‘Brutalized’ by North Korea
“North Korea has proven they are not nature’s noble men.”
Fred Warmbier, the father of Otto Warmbier, who North Korea freed the other day, and Kelly Martin, an official from the University of Cincinnati Medical Center spoke to the press today about Otto’s condition.
North Korea freed Otto Warmbier on Tuesday after spending 16 months in prison in the communist country. A court sentenced Otto Warmbier to 15 years of hard labor after he allegedly stole a propaganda sign.
However, Otto Warmbier has returned to the states in a coma. Martin stated that he suffered from a “severe neurological injury” and remains in stable condition. Warmbier claimed the “pariah regime in North Korea” “terrorized sand brutalized” his son for 18 months.
After Martin spoke, Warmbier stepped up to the podium. He wore the same blazer Otto Warmbier wore when he confessed his crimes in North Korea.
Warmbier explained that during his son’s imprisonment, the family had “to choose their words carefully” so they wouldn’t offend the North Koreans. From NBC News:
“North Korea has proven they are not nature’s noble men,” said Fred Warmbier, acknowledging that he can now speak freely. “We are not burdened by what North Korea says or does any longer. We’ve been forced to act quiet and act different because we didn’t want to offend them.”
He added that President Donald Trump called him Wednesday night to ask about his son’s condition and they shared a “really nice conversation.”
Warmbier praised the Trump administration, thanking Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and Joseph Yun, the State Department’s top official on North Korea.
But when asked of President Barack Obama and his officials could have done more, Warmbier snapped that “the results speak for themselves.”
With the freedom to speak, Warmbier did not mince his words. NBC continued:
Fred Warmbier, however, said Thursday that he does not believe the North Korean’s explanation that his son’s unknown medical condition was the result of botulism and a sleeping pill.
There’s “no excuse for any civilized nation to keep this a secret and deny top-notch medical care for so long,” he added.
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No official reason was given to him for why the North Koreans decided to let Otto Warmbier go and whether a deal was struck between Washington and the regime of Kim Jong Un.
“North Korea doesn’t do anything out of the kindness of their hearts,” Fred Warmbier added.
North Korea claimed it gave back Otto Warmbier on “humanitarian grounds.”
But overall, the family is beyond the moon to have Otto Warmbier back with them:
“I’m not confessing, I’m speaking,” Fred Warmbier said. “But Otto, I love you, and I’m so crazy about you and I’m so glad you’re home.”
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Comments
I don’t get this at all, why he was there is a key detail that seems to be omitted.
“Fred Warmbier described his son as adventurous, and said he was in Asia as part of an organized tour that included a stop-over in North Korea before going to Hong Kong for a study abroad trip.”
From the NBC article. Who organizes tours with ‘stop-overs’ in North Korea? This is a mystery.
Heck, the Soviet Union had a tourism agency Intourist from 1929 Stalin years to 1992 when it got ‘privatized’ into its current form. Just because it was run by the KGB/NKVD/etc…
And Intourist would warn its customers that traditional tourist pasttimes, such as stealing things from the hotels, would make the vacation far more exciting … especially when uniformed guards toting machine guns searched the entire party at the border because of the one jerk who just had to steal “souvenirs” anyway.
I happened to be in the car today during this press conference and listened to just about the entire thing on Fox News on XM. Mr. Warmbier said his son went to NK on a tour organized by a Chinese company. Otto was in China as part of a study abroad program and had an adventurous streak hence he was drawn to the tour.
PSGWSG
what does that mean? You are being too subtle…
Play stupid games, win stupid prizes
And apparently I messed up the acronym
Thanks! I never would of thought of that one…
While there is enough tragedy here to talk about at length, I can’t get too worked up about some idiot that decides it is a good idea to visit the DPRK, and then, while under the microscope, steal a propaganda sign. It’s very much like Darwin award material.
If some fool goes into a lions cage “to pet the big kitty cat” and gets mauled, I’m not going to blame the lion. But human beings and societies must be held to a higher standard.
Agree, but how exactly do you intend to enforce that higher standard with the likes of the NORKs? You can’t. Which is why you don’t go there.
They’re actually quite lucky the Norks didn’t fabricate charges against the entire tour group. Part of communist dogma—and a part particularly overdeveloped in its Far Eastern forms—is that any community (which in this context means any identifiable group … including tour groups) is expected to be self-policing so far as enforcing “correct” behavior is concerned. Failure to do this is itself a crime.
The limits to your sympathy should not also limit your disdain for North Korean barbarism.
My disdain for the NORKs knows no bounds. Which is why I shake my head when idiots go there and give those scumbags an opportunity to take them hostage. A normal person doesn’t put themself in that kind of situation.
He’s actually a smart guy and didn’t do anything wrong. He was literally pulled out of his tour group while waiting to leave the country.
A smart guy? Are you serious? He’s so smart that he went to North Freaking Korea? Well, he might be a rocket scientist, but he doesn’t have the common sense that God gave a boiled potato.
The rest of his tour group was not detained. So why was Warmbier?
Oh, yes. He stole a poster. In one of the most repressive countries on Earth.
I’d be very careful about accepting as fact the North Korean version of events. When have they ever been truthful and honest when it comes to the Americans they take as hostages?
They aren’t truthful, they aren’t honest. Of course you can’t accept their version of the events. They are totalitarian whack jobs that don’t value life in the least. Which is why anyone with a lick of sense DOESN’T GO THERE.
This kid grew up under Obama and the propaganda that the US is the bad guy. He might have believed that the things he heard about China and North Korea were just propaganda by the Bush administration and evil Republicans. He may be a victim of liberalism.
“But when asked whether President Barack Obama and his officials could have done more”
Such as …? I live outside the US, in a country known for violating its own citizens’ human rights rather egregiously. I become involved occasionally in helping US citizens who run afoul of the local legal system. When those citizens complain about their situation, I ask them why they believed that coming here on a lark — not to mention committing even a minor offense here knowingly — struck them as being a good idea. I’d like to ask Mr Warmbier to respond to that question for his son.
Extremely well said. I’ve never bought in to the notion of the “ugly American”, but c’mon. The amount of ignorance about life in places outside the US is astonishing. If this kid was a victim of anything, it was his profound niaveté.
What do you expect, they don’t teach stuff like this in our government schools, they teach about how evil America is, killing off all the polar bears and indigenous cultures.
Good grief. What a horrid nightmare this family has suffered during the previous 16 months. And now, this young man may be a vegetable for life because of kim jong fatboy and his vicious dictatorship.
I must commend Warmbier Sr. for his deft b-slap of former Pres. Lie All the Time and his impotence in this matter (“The results speak for themselves”).
God bless and good luck.
I’m glad POTUS is restoring the American policy that we do not abandon Americans to the “tender mercies” of their captors in foreign nations. We don’t pay ransom, but we do work to free them.
Give the young man a break. He went to NK. I did stuff a lot dumber than that, but managed to survive.
The villains are the North Koreans , not the young man.
Really? A lot dumber? He is not surviving too well. Unfortunately he put himself into a position that led to this opportunity for the Norks to use him as a political (and otherwise) football.
I’m more than willing to give the young man a break, and I hope for his full recovery although based upon the doctors description of the loss of brain tissue that appears unlikely.
I’ve went on some pretty good adventures. But I would never have gone to the DPRK. Because I had better teachers. My parish priest, the Monsignor, captured 11 NORKs at the point of his .45. A Marine now deceased from the Korean War gave me one of my first jobs loading moving trucks. He was a SGT who crossed 600 yards under enemy fire and had to be ordered not to expose himself to enemy fire to retrieve the bodies of the dead. To leave them there. It’s not worth the cost for the living to sacrifice themselves for the dead.
He spent more than a year recovering from his wounds in a Naval Regional Medical Center recovering sufficiently from his wounds to walk again. He never wore shorts again because of his shriveled leg, which he would have told you was a small price to pay. But I didn’t ask as I already knew the answer.
The problem with young Otto Wambier (still not sure about the spelling as I’ve seen it spelled with an “r”) is that he had no one to guide him about the true nature of the vile NORK, CHICOM, Iranian, et al regimes.
So how the f*** was he supposed to know if we’re too cowardly or complicit to tell him different?
Aayan Hirsi Ali can’t speak on a college campus. This would threaten the narrative that the US is the worst place on earth. “Hey, maybe it is a rape culture.”
No hint of the truth must be allowed.
And if a few eggs, i.e. true stories, have to be sacrificed to maintain the narrative that America is the only evil country on earth, so be it.
I take it for a fact, give that I can’t get even a thumbs up, that you have capitulated.
Who can say, given the cowardly silence, that Otto Wambier made the wrong decision?
When you grow up in America the freedoms you have seem so obvious that everyone should have them. Unfortunately, too many Americans, especially many of our youth, do not understand how special we are. This leads to two tragedies.
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The first tragedy is that our youth goes to foreign countries, do stupid things that would result in little more than a slap on the wrist if caught, and then, failing to realize the obviousness of that states extensive surveillance, get caught only to discover the severity of the crime.
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Second, far too many simply cannot comprehend how much freedom we are given here as well as how Much we allow. They look at relatively minor issues and get all worked up about it and then protest arguing that the entire system is messed up, that America is evil, or whatever. For example, a certain portion of the public is angry over the discrimination against minorities, LGBT members, or whatever. They simply cannot comprehend how LGBT members are thrown from rooftops in many countries for no crime other than being gay or how slavery is still an active trade in many modern countries.
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People in this country are far too busy tearing down what we have for not being good enough without understanding that their efforts are destroying the goose that laid the golden egg. It’s all just another demonstration of how ignorant so many really are.
Otto Weimbier had been lied to.
A lot.
Whose fault is that?
I was a naval intelligence officer.
It wasn’t a tourist destination. I could have told you that.
Thank you. That’s what I’ve been trying to say.
North Korea, I mean.
People do this incredibly dumb stuff all the time. Backpackers in Afghanistan and Iran. Why go to Hawaii when you can go to North Korea? When you have a country of 350 million people, a few are going to do crazy stuff. I guarantee after this Americans will still go to North Korea.
It’s a shame Otto came back on a stretcher, and dennis rodman came back walking.