RedHanded - Episode 84 - Otto Warmbier: What Really Happened in North Korea?

Episode Date: March 7, 2019

This case starts with a pretty mundane crime; an accusation of poster theft. But it ends in the mysterious and tragic death of a 22 year old man - Otto Warmbier.  Otto died after he was arrested while on holiday in the secretive and mysterious nation of North Korea. But what really happened to Otto? The evidence is anything but clear cut... https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/19/us/otto-warmbier-north-korea-dies.html https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1mTZjWePlxI&t=30s   See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Wondery Plus subscribers can listen to Red Handed early and ad-free. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts. So, get this. The Ontario Liberals elected Bonnie Crombie as their new leader. Bonnie who? I just sent you her profile. Her first act as leader, asking donors for a million bucks for her salary. That's excessive. She's a big carbon tax supporter. Oh yeah. Check out her record as mayor. Oh, get out of here. She even increased taxes carbon tax supporter. Oh yeah, check out her record as mayor. Oh, get out of here.

She even increased taxes in this economy. Yeah, higher taxes, carbon taxes. She sounds expensive. Bonnie Crombie and the Ontario Liberals. They just don't get it. That'll cost you. A message from the Ontario PC Party. They say Hollywood is where dreams are made.

A seductive city where many flock to get rich, be adored, and capture America's heart. But when the spotlight turns off, fame, fortune, and lives can disappear in an instant. Follow Hollywood and Crime, The Cotton Club Murder on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Saruti. I'm Hannah. And welcome to Red Handed. Today we are covering a bit of a different case, because it starts out with a pretty mundane crime,

an accusation of poster theft. But it ends in the death of a 22-year-old student, and most of you will probably already know his name. Today we are delving into the bizarre and tragic story of Otto Warmbier, a 22-year-old All-American college student who in 2015 went on an adventure holiday, became a prisoner of a hostile rogue state, and died. The mystery here is that no one really knows what Otto endured during his 15-month captivity, or why he really died.

And it's an understandable conclusion to think. Well, of course, he was arrested by the North Koreans, and they probably worked-slash-tortured him to death in one of their prison camps. But the thing is, those camps are almost exclusively for their own people, so other North Koreans who dissent and need to be punished by the brutal regime. This case raises a very important question about why Pyongyang broke with its supposedly normal practice and injured the young American so horrifically

that he came home in a coma and died. This isn't what normally happens to Westerners arrested in North Korea. But before we get there, there are many other questions to tackle. Like, what made an American college student go to Pyongyang in the first place? What kind of nightmare might he have endured while in captivity? And how did his eventual death impact global political affairs and almost push America into a war with North Korea? And this is definitely one of the most surreal cases we've covered. I watched the news when this happened and I lived in South Korea for a time.

Before this happened though, I was thinking about how much more I would have had to say if I was in Korea when this happened. But having said that, I did think that I knew the story. But having looked into it, it's much worse and much weirder than I ever thought it was. First, let's talk about Otto and start at the beginning. He really was all American. And that's how you see him described all over the shop. And it is quite hard, I find, not to roll my eyes at that phrase because the United States being a nation of immigrants,

it only ever seems like that phrase is used to refer to white Americans. And you can come for us if you want. But if you're going to come for us, please bring one example of where a person of colour has been referred to as all American. And then we'll throw our hands up and say that we got it wrong. I would be really interested to see that description. However, if you were to ask me what I thought all American meant, I would have described Otto. He grew up the eldest in a Republican middle class American family who lived in Ohio in a big American house with a flag outside and everything. There are so many flags in

the States. I've just got back from New York and everywhere. And I was saying to my my mate, who's American, who I was staying with, I was like, there are a lot of flags. And she was like, there are a lot of flags in Britain too, you just don't notice them. And I'm like, I really don't think that. No, there aren't. As she said that, we were in Central Park and this guy cycles past on a bike, on a push bike with an enormous American flag, like off the back of his bike. And she was like, okay, I'll give you that. That one is quite a big flag. There are so so many flags in the US I'm in the US right now I'm in San Diego and yeah like everywhere you go every house you walk past every building you drive past there is a massive fucking flag outside and in the UK yeah there are flags imagine like walking past a row of houses that all had their like Union Jack

or uh what's the white and red one St George. George's Cross. Had the St. George's flag outside. You would think that's a racist street. That's a street I don't want to be on. More so with the St. George's Cross, but definitely. The Union Jack, I'd be like, that's a bit weird. Like maybe there's another royal baby. If it was St. George's Cross on an entire street, I'd think I'm in EDL territory. Yeah, me too.

That's what I would think. And that's sad. I do think it's been appropriated by white supremacists and white nationalists in this country. But we're just not that flaggy. We aren't a flaggy nation. I was trying to think of places I've seen flags in London and I could only come up with the Houses of Parliament and Buckingham Palace. Yeah. And if you walk around, like, embassy, like, embassy.

Right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, Otto, he lived in a house with a flag on it, and he went to Wyoming High School, which from everything we've read was a pretty bloody good school, and Otto excelled there. He was ranked second in his entire school by his grades. He was a maths genius and an athlete. He was a great swimmer and football player,

our football and also the rest of the world's football, so to Americans, soccer. And if that wasn't enough, he was also really well liked at school. In his senior year, he was prom king, literally the most popular person. Whatever the hell that means. What does it mean to be king of a dance? I find it so weird. I think it's a public vote. So strange. It's just another American tradition I don't understand. But I don't need to. It's not there for me to understand. So carry on. The point is, Otto was described as popular, athletic, classically good looking, and he had unending charisma. He was a typical super preppy college kid, but he wasn't a prick. People genuinely liked Otto. And the thing about Otto that really struck me when we were doing the research

was that he was a normal guy in so many ways. And he was also exceptional in so many ways. You know, again, just coming back to how well regarded, how well liked, how popular he was at school by, it seems, students and teachers, because he was asked to give a speech at his high school graduation. And during the speech, he quoted the office saying, I wish there was a way to know you're in the good old days before you've actually left them. But the thing is, for Otto, as much as he probably loved high school, his best days looked yet to come. Otto had just got into the University of Virginia, which is a fucking great university, on a scholarship.

And given that he was a maths whiz, he wanted to become a banker. So, you know, this is a kid that like had his life planned. He knew what he wanted and he was well capable of achieving what he wanted. So at university, he joined a fraternity known for being full of kind of nerdy dudes. Again, frats and sororities are not something that we have here and it's not something I totally understand but I did hear one of my friend's brothers was in a fraternity and the hazing thing that he went through was that he had to sit in a locked cupboard for 48 hours listening to I'm Turning Japanese wow he's now a marine and he was like that is the hardest thing I have ever

had to do oh my god marine training piece of piss it just seems like when I hear of frats and sororities and maybe this is just like you know from watching endless slasher movies and watching the news to be quite honest they just seem like bullying rape sheds where people just get fucking hammered take loads of drugs end up like in awful situations doing awful things and then raping or murdering each other. Yeah. That's what it seems like. But yeah, I don't think the one Otto was in was like that. The idea behind them is it's like a network of people. So when you get out into the real world, it can be like, oh, I'm a Kappa Kappa Gamma, and then you'll get a job. I don't know.

I don't understand how it works. It's so weird. But anyway, again, it's not for us to understand. And yeah, like you said, the one Otto joined was like described as being full of like nerdy guys. So I don't know. I think Otto is quite like he's popular, but he's not like an aggressive quote unquote jock. No. And one of his college friends said that academics and family always took precedence over everything else for Otto. And his hard work paid off, because he won a finance internship in his junior year. There was no disputing that Otto was a guy who was going

places. As excited as Otto was about his internship, and of course he would be, they're ridiculously competitive and make a huge difference when applying for jobs. He knew that he was going to spend his entire summer at a computer staring at spreadsheets. So he decided to make the most of his winter break. Otto was a curious guy. He was fascinated by other cultures and countries. And these days, that hardly made him rare. But that's the thing. I feel like that's what makes him so relatable. He chose places that pushed him out of his comfort zone.

He was full of energy and wanted to experience the world. And finally, that winter, Otto decided that he was going to live his best life by experiencing the world's most secretive and repressive nation, North Korea. I think it's fair to say North Korea is terrifying. Oh yeah, scary shit. Absolutely, absolutely terrifying. I think the scariest thing about it, for me anyway, is the idea of there is an entire nation of people who genuinely have no idea what is going on in the outside world.

Yeah, they thought they won the World Cup. And the Olympics. They think Kim Jong-un invented golf and the hamburger. And people sort of say like, oh, but they must know. They must know. But the way we get information is through international news. In North Korea, your phone can't make international calls. If you buy a radio, you can only get one station, which is Radio Pyongyang, and you can't turn it off.

You can only turn it down. So you're just being pumped full of this information. So why would you think it's not true? And I would like to think if I lived in North Korea, I would defect. Like I'd really like to think that of myself. But you have no idea when you're in that situation. The only information you have is made up. And also, I'd like to think I would defect.

But I think there's a difference between wanting to defect and actually being able to fucking do it. I fell down a big black hole of, like, just watching video after video after video of people who defected or tried to defect. Fucking hell, it's hard to defect. You have to walk. If you go into China, and if Chinese officials catch you, they will send you back to North Korea. If you go over that bridge into Russia,

if the Russians catch you, they will send you back to North Korea. Literally, the only places you can get to that won't send you back are Thailand, Vietnam, I believe, and South Korea, obviously. And if Thai or Vietnamese people, officials catch you, they'll send you and South Korea, obviously. And if like Thai or Vietnamese people, officials catch you, they'll send you to South Korea at least. But getting there is next to

impossible. Yeah, it's not like you can just walk over the border. Absolutely not. It's a nation that is a prison. That's the only way that I can think of it in the mildest sense. Because like we said at the start, this is a nation that throws voices of dissent, anybody, just ordinary people, into nightmarish prison camps and frequently executes anyone who tries to escape. But despite all of this, or maybe perhaps because of all of this, North Korea does allow thousands of tourists through its doors every year. And as you can imagine, if you go on a trip to North Korea, this isn't you like eat, pray, loving your way across North Korea. These tours are tightly controlled and heavily censored. It's a way for the North Korean government to put out a view of their country as they wish for outsiders to

view them and it's also a way for a nation crippled by international sanctions and quite frankly a shit economy to make easy money. you can only go into Pyongyang and you can only be with a guide you're told when you're allowed to take pictures also I'm very wary of any information that comes out of Pyongyang anyway so whenever I see news of like oh like today in Pyongyang this I'm like no way like they just put out what they want us to see because journalists aren't allowed even if they're allowed into North Korea they are only allowed in Pyongyang and they're not allowed to see what's actually going on. Because outside of Pyongyang, it's all famine and gulags.

Like no one has ever seen that. But I do wonder, like if you live in Pyongyang, whether you have to like sign some sort of agreement. Like when the tourists come, smile all the time. And I even read this one guy who, a journalist who did the sort of Pyongyang tour, and he was convinced that he saw the same people walking past at like hour intervals and stuff like that. So it's like totally regimented of like, this is what a city looks like. And we're all going to do city things. I can believe it. I mean, this is the country that you, if you're not seen clapping hard enough, if you're not seen crying hard enough, like if one of the leaders dies or something like that they will throw you in

a prison camp the whole fact that you can't even turn off radio pyongyang you can only turn it down it is always there that constant drone of lies and misinformation and control it is all pervasive and yeah these people are completely trapped whether they know what's going on or they don't i think they know how fucked they are i just wonder if they realize that the rest of the world isn't like that. The way I've had it described to me, like when I was teaching, I had a private class of Hyundai engineers. So they're all married middle-aged men. And they only wanted to talk about their national service. And I only wanted to talk about North Korea. So it was a great conversation class. So in South Korea, you have to do two years national service. In North Korea, you have to do 10. So they had all been at one point or the other stationed at the demilitarized zone.

The way they described North Korea to me was that it used to be like a brick wall. But now, because cell phones are being smuggled over the border, they're getting radios in. There's a radio station in Seoul that's run by defectors for defectors. And Seoul's only about 45 minutes from the border. So there is information being pumped into North Korea now. So the way they described it to me was it was a brick wall and now bricks are being knocked through. So North Koreans are more aware now than they ever have been, but still not totally aware. And I think you're right. Like these radios that are

illegally being smuggled in that people are listening to for any sort of desperate news from the outside world. Imagine how you would feel if you were an impoverished, brutalized family living in North Korea, listening on one of these illegal radio devices. And then you hear how someone like Trump is going over to North Korea and saying, quote, he's in love with him and legitimizing that man. Yeah. All hope is now totally lost if that nation is saying that about your leader. There's a lot to talk about today. So let's go back to how somebody like Otto or somebody like you could go on a trip to North Korea. If you Google, go to North Korea, there are

a bunch of tour operators out there promising to take you on, quote, the ultimate adventure into the world's most secretive state, a nation so elusive that it provokes intrigue like no other. North Korea has long kept itself isolated from the prying eyes of the West, but slowly this fiercely nationalistic society is opening its door to visitors, and you could be one of them. That is like copy I lifted directly from a website. Wow. Isolated from the prying eyes of the West. Are you fucking serious? Get your fucking prying Western eyes off our nation.

We're secretive and elusive, you bitches. I did go onto a lot of these two websites. And I don't know, I feel like maybe when I was younger, I would have gone. But now I just feel like I definitely wouldn't go. And I have been to Myanmar, I went a couple of years ago before all the Rohingya Muslim stuff started happening. Now, I 100% wouldn't want to go there. I don't want to be preachy because it's hard to be a totally ethical traveler. If you start to dig down that deep, you would literally never go anywhere. And you probably wouldn't even want to stay in your own country. As like an avid traveler, I definitely am drawn in particular

to like off the beaten track adventures. I'm definitely not like a pool holiday kind of girl, but I just wouldn't want to go to North Korea to legitimize a nation that oppresses and murders its own people like North Korea does. And I think the key thing, although we're saying this, I am definitely and we are definitely not judging Otto. He was 21 when he went. At 21, I could easily see myself having done the same thing. I think I'm with you. I haven't been to North Korea. I've stood in North Korea. If you're in Korea ever, the demilitarized zone tour, I'm calling it the demilitarized zone because it's been so drilled into my head to call it the DMZ and it just feels wrong in my mouth. So what happens is you have to go to the USO in Seoul and you have to get up at the crack of Christ and a bus comes to get you and there's a Korean

tour guide and they like give you some chat on the drive up. But then once you get to where the border starts, the Koreans get off the bus and Americans get on because Koreans are not allowed at the border at all ever. So the entire like touristy bit of the demilitarized zone is totally run by American GIs. So then you get to this little lecture theater and an American soldier will give you a talk about all of the atrocities that happened there. And the guy who gave my talk spoke so quickly. I was getting every second word he said. And I was like, fuck man, like English is my first language and I'm having a hard time.

God help the Dutch people behind me. And then I heard this guy speak to another American soldier afterwards who was like, oh, man, that was fast as hell. And he was like, I've done it way faster than that, man. And I was like, what? What? Where am I? And then you like go and look at the tunnel museum because like the North are tunneling all the time. And then you go to this train station,

which they sort of market as it will be, it's a totally built train station. And they say that when peace comes to North and South Korea and when Korea reunites, that that train will go into North Korea. And then that railway through North Korea will connect with the Trans-siberian railway so in theory it will be possible to get the train from paris to japan and that's what they're sort

of telling you they also say it's a nature reserve the demilitarized zone that oh no human hands have touched this stretch of land look at all the cool birds and stuff and you're like really also it is not demilitarized by any stretch of the imagination and there are these little blue huts where the north and the south meet for like diplomatic type meetings and you can go and stand in them and your phone will say you are in north korea so that is how i've stood in north korea but i would for exactly the same reasons as you never and you can't go from south korea anywhere you would have had to go to china to fly in yeah and this is the thing with going there i feel like you know people will be like well it sounds like And you can't go from South Korea anywhere. You would have had to go to China to fly in. Shanghai, yeah.

And this is the thing with going there. I feel like, you know, people will be like, well, it sounds like you guys have been to other places that are maybe a bit problematic. But the thing with North Korea is this money doesn't go to anybody else. You aren't going there and being like, well, I have issues with the government, but I'm supporting this like local guest house that I'm staying in or all these little restaurants. No, all of the money, because it only goes through tour operators, all of the money goes directly back to the government. And they use that money to oppress and murder their people. That is the big difference with visiting North Korea. And again, like I said, we're not judging Otto. Like, I wouldn't even judge somebody if they said they went. I just wouldn't go. And especially after fucking researching this,

I wouldn't go. But if fucking researching this i wouldn't go but if you want to you can because there are quite a few tour operators offering trips this is literally the only way you can visit north korea you can't just pitch up on your own you can if you're so inclined go with young pioneers which is the company otto used and they have loads of trips to north korea this year and are our favourites from their upcoming schedule. Kim Jong-il birthday ultra-budget and DMZ tour. International Women's Day ultra-budget tour. St. Patrick's Day ultra-budget tour and DMZ tour.

Kim Il-sung birthday tour. The DPRK political interest tour. What a name. I love how they're all ultra budget as well. To be honest, I imagine North Korea is pretty cheap. South Korea is pretty cheap. So North Korea must be alright. Ultra budget.

Ultra cheap. I couldn't spend the money I was making in South Korea if I tried. That's hilarious. Honestly, I can understand why people go and teach English and just stay forever. You can only stay for eight years before you have to marry a Korean. But people do stay for a long time because it used to be the law, it might have changed now, that there had to be at least one native English speaker in every school in the country. So they try and make it super attractive prospects by paying for your flights

in and out, paying you well and paying for your apartment. So all of the money you earn apart from tax and health insurance is yours to keep and you physically cannot spend it if you tried. The only time I ever spent my whole paycheck is when I went to Japan. It's impossible. You can't do it. And it's cheaper to eat in restaurants than it is to cook at home. And I can imagine the quality of life is still high. Quality of life in South Korea is really, really high for sure.

And like we said, Young Pioneers is the company Otto used. And they seem to be an operator specializing in budget excursions to quote destinations your mother would rather you stay away from. Trips have a reputation for being like spring break but in a geopolitical hotspot and I kind of get why they're trying to market it that way because like so many times people have told me not to do something and my initial response is fucking watch me. Absolutely it's like combining all the things that they think the demographic they're going after wants it's a bit of political interest in a geopolitical hotspot, but will also get you smashed. And it's ultra budget. St. Patrick's Day. I can't think of

a less related to East Asia holiday than St. Patrick's Day. God's sake. Also the irony of International Women's Day ultra budget tour to North Koreaa let's just say if you're not too aware women's rights are not high on their list of fucking priorities in north korea no back to otto and for his winter break that he wanted to you know go escape have a bit of fun before his summer um chain to a computer otto decided to go for the New Year's party tour and put down a deposit of $1,200 for the five-day, four-night trip. Yeah, that's pretty ultra-budget. If that's flights as well, I would class that as ultra-budget, yeah. So after booking this trip, Otto received a confirmation email telling him that his visa would be arranged by the company and presented to him when he met

the tour group at Beijing Airport. And like Hannah said before, you can't fly directly into or out of North Korea from like most places. You have to go via China. And at the time of Otto's trip, the State Department in the US had an advisory in place against its citizens traveling to North Korea because they'd be quote, beyond the American government's power to directly help them. And again, I feel like a lot of people want to judge Otto at this point and be like, well, he's being told by the US State Department not to go to North Korea. It's advising its citizens against travel. But it wasn't prohibited. And the way that a lot of these tour operators, especially young pioneers, wrap up these guided tours, it makes it seem totally fine. And also remember, they do hundreds of trips like this a year, and most of them are totally fine. What happened to Otto is like a freak incident. I don't want to

even entertain the idea of judging him for this because so many people have been on these trips. And also, as you can imagine, Otto's parents weren't totally thrilled by his plans for this trip. But as his mother later explained, why would you say no to a kid like this? And I get that. He was the perfect kid, quote unquote, in so many ways. And like you said, Hannah, I've purposefully chosen to go to places that I was told were dangerous. People told me not to go to Colombia on my own. I had a fucking great time. I don't know, maybe I was just lucky. But I had a totally amazing experience and nothing bad ever happened to me. And when I told my parents, they weren't exactly thrilled, but they

trust me. And I think like Otto's mum would have been, I think my parents probably look at me and think she's got her shit together. She'll be fine. And I think that's what Otto's parents thought too. So I was quite interested to see what the current travel advice from the UK government was. And it turns out we're actually still a little bit more cash than the Americans about this. I suppose probably because we weren't directly involved in the Korean War in the same way as the Americans were maybe. So here's what the Foreign and Commonwealth Office advises. They advise against all but essential travel into North Korea, saying that while daily life in the capital city Pyongyang may appear calm, the security situation in North Korea can change with little notice and with no

advanced warning of possible actions by the North Korean authorities. But the US established in 2017, so that's the year Otto died, that its citizens were banned from entering North Korea due to the serious risk of arrest and long-term detention of US nationals. So if this is all sounding tempting, Americans, too bad you can't go. But back then, Otto could. So I think you can still go if you're an American, if you have like another passport as well. What it is, is you can't go into North Korea now with a US passport. Maybe that's fine. So shortly after Christmas 2015, Otto met the other young pioneers in China and boarded an old Soviet jet to Pyongyang. In Pyongyang, which is North Korea's capital,

border police confiscated cameras and flicked through each file on smartphones to make sure no outsider was smuggling in subversive materials because religious material, pornographic material, etc. are all, of course, totally banned. After the checks, Otto stepped through passport control and just like that, left the free world. During his trip, Otto was with a group made up of a mix of Canadians, Australians, Europeans, and I believe at least one more American. And pretty soon into his time in Pyongyang, Otto started to feel uneasy. The tour took the group to the USS Pueblo, an American Navy spy ship that had been seized by the North

Koreans in 1968. And today, it serves as a rather odd tourist attraction. The young pioneers were taken on this tour and regaled by a North Korean who told the foreign visitors about capturing the ship from, quote, the imperial enemy. He told them all how the 82 American soldiers captured on the Pueblo were beaten and starved for 11 months before finally being released. The story made Otto realize that although both North and South Korea announced a ceasefire in 1953, there had never actually been an official peace agreement. So North Korea was still technically at war with South Korea and therefore with their ally, the US. It's actually just the longest armistice in history.

There is a Guinness World Records entry about it. I think it's 57 years. So yeah, technically still at war, but just a ceasefire. And I understand the idea of feeling not that bothered by it. When I was in Korea, people my age and even older, they had always been at war with North Korea. It was just a part of their life. So they didn't feel threatened. Maybe it's different now things have heated up a bit.

But when I was there five years ago, North Korea was kind of a joke. Like everyone just laughed about it. I was in my office and there was this huge like fire alarm that went off. And I was like, what the fuck is that? Everyone is ignoring it. All the teachers are just pretending it's not happening. I'm like, should we get the children and maybe go outside perhaps? Is there something happening?

And they were like, oh, no, no, no, don't worry about it. It's just the North Korea alarm. And every six months, it turns out there is a national alarm that goes off in South Korea at the same time. And you're supposed to treat it like an earthquake. But because it's happened so often and nothing happens, everyone just ignores it. I do find that really interesting. And I wonder, you know, it was obviously five years ago you were in South Korea. I do also think the South Korean government have to manage their people in a very interesting way? They're so close to North Korea. They are, let's be honest, potentially in immediate danger from North Korea. But it's about how do you not make your people feel terrified all the time that North Korea could just blow you to pieces, still keep that morale up?

I think probably get rid of the North Korea alarms would be step one. I mean, it's weird that they have them. But then it's almost like, is it a coping thing of just like laughing at it so that it's either laughing at it or being fucking terrified? I think you're right. I'm just not sure that laughing at it is a government sanctioned reaction. It is a coping mechanism. The city I lived in is called Changwon.

It's basically the Milton Keynes of South Korea. It was the only like designed city. So it's the only one on a grid system, etc. So it was built to specifically be the capital of the country could move underground and all of the roads are really wide so they could double as runways. So even living in a city that was specifically designed for war, you just know I never felt it. Yeah. I don't know. It was so strange. And I get that. I think here the thing that Otto starts to feel, which I do understand, is being in this submarine that is being paraded as like part of we captured all these Americans and we tortured them for 11 months before we returned them and the constant references to the fact that they're still technically at war with the US and calling them the imperial enemy. I can imagine if Otto is at max one of only two Americans on this tour why it made him feel a bit awkward

let's say. After this tour Otto's roommate for the entirety of the trip who was a british guy named danny gratton actually jokingly started calling otto imperial enemy as a nickname out and about in north korea just calling him the imperial enemy like hey imperial enemy you want some beer oh god i wouldn't even do that in south korea yeah i'll see if i can find an interview with danny and post it on the facebook group he. He's a lad. Danny's a lad. Lads on tour in North Korea. He is. He's a lad on tour in North Korea. Apparently, you know, when Danny's saying this, Otto did, according to Danny, laugh it off. Pueblo being told about all the torture, alongside looking at billboard after billboard of North

Korean missiles blowing up the White House, which apparently are just like literally everywhere in Pyongyang, I think may have started to just make Otto feel that little bit uneasy. But as it continued, the tour felt more and more like a bizarre charade rather than a visit to a hostile nation. The young pioneers visited the 70-foot bronze statues of the first two generations of the country's dictators. There are very specific rules about how and when you're allowed to take photographs of those statues. And they noted that they could never really be sure if the citizens they saw spontaneously hailing the great leader

were sincere or just putting it on. And I think we can take a good guess at which it is. And on their tour, the group, of course, knew that outside the stage-managed capital lay starving villages full of dying, impoverished people and brutal concentration camps. But Otto succeeded, at least in some small way, in bridging the cultural divide.

There are so many photos of him on that trip laughing, playing and throwing snowballs with North Korean children. On New Year's Eve, because remember, that's why they're there, it's the big night of the tour. The young pioneers went drinking at a fancy bar, though according to Danny Grattan, no one got crazy drunk, like it would later be reported. I don't know, man, if the North Koreans drink anything like the South Koreans,

they would have got absolutely hammered, for sure. Maybe it's just relative to Danny's life as a lad he's like I went that far but the reports were like you were fucking hammered maybe that's true but I can say hand on heart as a reasonably big drinker I have never drunk as much as I drank in South Korea Jesus Christ it's just it's part of the culture it's just it's so different to here because the bars don't close. They don't close. They close when everyone goes home. Wow. I also worked in the foreigner bar on the weekend. So I physically had no choice but to be there. And you can drink when you work there. I like that you were earning enough money from teaching that you had so much that you didn't know what to do with, but you still worked in a bar at the weekend.

Didn't work for the money. They couldn't legally pay us because the visa we were on, they knocked off 50,000 won off your bar tab for every shift you worked. That's what I mean. So literally just working for booze. Yeah. That's how bored I was, Saruti. That's how little there was to do. Wow. So after this bar, Dani said that they celebrated the final hours of New Year's Eve with thousands of North Koreans in Pyongyang's main square. The group then returned to their hotel, the Yanggakdo Hotel, also known as, quote, the Alcatraz of Fun, which is my favourite thing ever. Fire that PR manager immediately, the Alcatraz of Fun. I don't think that's what the hotel calls itself, Hannah. I think it's called that by the people who are forced to stay there.

Because basically, if you go to North Korea with any of these tour groups, which is the only way, as we said, you can go to North Korea, you will be staying at the Yanggakdo Hotel. There is nowhere else you will basically be allowed to stay. Because here they can control you. So yeah, Alcatraz are fun because you are trapped. And this hotel is on a little island in Pyongyang called Yangak Island. So hence the name.

Definitely I don't think to do with a PR company. I think to do with unfortunate TripAdvisor reviews. Because apparently the allegedly five-star Yangakdo Hotel, which I've seen pictures of, doesn't look like a five-star hotel to me. And it only has a 3.5 star rating on TripAdvisor. And you're probably going there with quite low expectations. And you're still only giving it 3.5 star rating on TripAdvisor. And you're probably going there with quite low expectations. And you're still only giving it 3.5 stars. But this place, whatever we want to say about it, they do try, it seems, to keep the foreigners that they host entertained.

Because the 47-story tower is furnished with five restaurants. One of which revolves five bars, including one that offers karaoke obs and a casino a sauna a massage parlor and even a bowling alley you're trapped there but you can have fun maybe if you give them some karaoke they won't notice that they're not allowed to leave i think yes exactly pile loads of random shit into this hotel call it a five-star hotel put it on an island and just don't let people leave and go anywhere else and you know with all this shit going on, you can have a grand old time there, I assume. But the one thing you are most definitely not allowed to do at the Yangakto Hotel is go onto the fifth floor, because it's completely restricted. They pretend basically

like the fifth floor doesn't exist. Fucking definitely does. It exists. But if you are in the hotel lifts, the buttons go 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 7, so on. There is no button for the fifth floor because it doesn't exist. And as we go on to find out, there's some fucking creepy shit going on on this fifth floor, allegedly. Because I read a blog by a guy who stayed at this hotel and managed to get onto the fifth floor. He said that he got off at the sixth floor and walked down a set of stairs that he found to get onto the restricted fifth floor. According to this guy, he was surprised that the doors were open to the fifth floor, so he walked in. And bear in mind, what I'm about to tell you, I just read on a travel blog. So, like, I can't confirm that it is verified information.

Journalism. But he said that when he got onto the fifth floor, he saw a room with lights coming from the inside. And when he looked inside, he saw security cameras, TV screens, and what looked like surveillance equipment that seemed to show the inside of hotel bedrooms. They're spying on you. Obviously qualifying with this is the fact that I can't vouch for this information. But this kind of shit does happen. The Russians do it.

The North Koreans definitely will do this, does happen. The Russians do it. The North Koreans definitely will do this, I think. You go stay there. They keep all of the tourists that come in this one hotel. Why? Exactly. They can spy on them. I don't think that this is beyond the realms of possibility in any sense. He also said that on the fifth floor when he was walking around that the walls were covered with brightly coloured anti-American and anti-Japanese propaganda paintings and countless images glorifying the former supreme leader Kim Jong-il. Creepy shit, right? Well, don't forget it. We'll come back to it. This is important. So after their big night out, some of the young pioneers headed to one of the bars in the Yanggokdo Hotel. But Danny Grattan instead went bowling and lost track of Otto. He said that it was only later that he would wonder about the two-hour window that none of them could account for Otto.

But I'm guessing during this time, not many of them could account for each other anyway. They're all out drinking. They've been out for hours. It's after midnight now. Yes, they all say they couldn't account for Otto. But, like, I wonder if they could account for each other or even themselves during that time. And they probably felt really safe. Yeah.

They probably felt like they didn't need to be looking out for each other. They're on a guided tour. They're all in the same hotel. And I do feel like sometimes you do get that feeling of like, I need to properly watch my back here. So then you're extra careful. And I genuinely think in this situation, they might not have had that sense of needing to look out for each other because it feels so restricted and so safe. Every face they probably would have looked at in that hotel would either have been a smiling North Korean that's there to like service this hotel or just other tourists. They're the only people there. you lose a mate and you have no idea what happened to them. In this case, North Korea would later

seemingly fill in the time gap by releasing incredibly grainy, poorly lit CCTV camera footage. We've seen this footage and frankly, it's a completely unidentifiable figure moving around on the restricted fifth floor of the hotel. This figure can be seen removing a framed propaganda poster from the wall. The North Koreans would of course claim that this mysterious poster thief was Otto. It could be anyone, it really could. It just looks like a tall-ish person, that's all it is. So whatever happened during those lost hours, when Danny returned to his and Otto's room at around 4.30am on the 1st of January, Otto was already fast asleep.

To this day, Danny Gratton, who granted had only known Otto for a few days, cannot believe that Otto would go up to the fifth floor on his own and take the poster. Danny said in interviews that they'd already bought their souvenirs. He never mentioned doing anything like that. And if you watch interviews with Danny, if I were going to do something a bit wild I'd get him involved there are lads on tour in North Korea why is he sneaking off on his own and if he had done it if he had done this incredibly dangerous thing he'd be showing off about it and showing everyone what he'd done he wouldn't have kept it secret I don't think if he felt so safe this is the thing and him and Danny you know they shared a room for the entire trip this was the last night of the trip I just feel like it would have come up in conversation at some point, surely,

or he would have been to Danny, let's go do this. Nothing like that is ever mentioned. I just find it really bizarre. And from everything we know about Otto, he seems like a straight-laced kid. Maybe it was him, maybe it wasn't him. But I find it surprising. I would be surprised if it had really been Otto. That's just my opinion.

The following morning, so January 2nd, 2016, at the airport, Danny and Otto were the last two young pioneers to present their passports. They were stood side by side at a single desk, and it was taking an uncomfortably long time. Danny said that he noticed the officers were intently scrutinising their documents. Then out of nowhere, two soldiers marched up to them. One tapped Otto on the shoulder. Danny thought the authorities just wanted to give Otto a hard time,

being that he was the imperial enemy, after all. So jokingly, Danny said to Otto, well, that's the last we'll ever see of you. Otto laughed at Danny and then let himself be led away through a wooden door beside the check-in area. As he walked through that door, there was no way Otto could have known he'd never be free again. Hi, I'm Lindsey Graham, the host of Wondery Show American Scandal. We bring to light some of the biggest controversies in U.S. history.

Presidential lies, environmental disasters, corporate fraud. In our latest series, NASA embarks on an ambitious program to reinvent space exploration with the launch of its first reusable vehicle, the Space Shuttle. And in 1985, they announced they're sending teacher Krista McAuliffe into space aboard the Space Shuttle Challenger, along with six other astronauts. But less than two minutes after liftoff, the Challenger explodes. And in the tragedy's aftermath, investigators uncover a series of preventable failures by NASA and its contractors that led to the disaster. Follow American Scandal on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts.

Experience all episodes ad-free and be the first to binge the newest season only on Wondery+. You can join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify. Start your free trial today. You don't believe in ghosts? I get it. Lots of people don't. I didn't either until I came face to face with them.

Ever since that moment, hauntings, spirits, and the unexplained have consumed my entire life. I'm Nadine Bailey. I've been a ghost tour guide for the past 20 years. I've taken people along with me into the shadows, uncovering the macabre tales that linger in the darkness, and inside some of the most haunted houses, hospitals, prisons, and more.

Join me every week on my podcast, Haunted Canada, as we journey through terrifying and bone-chilling stories of the unexplained. Search for Haunted Canada on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, or wherever you find your favorite podcasts. Harvard is the oldest and richest university in America. But when a social media-fueled fight over Harvard and its new president broke out last fall, that was no protection. Claudine Gay is now gone.

We've exposed the DEI regime, and there's much more to come. This is The Harvard Plan, a special series from the Boston Globe and WNYC's On The Media. To listen, subscribe to On The Media wherever you get your podcasts. That very same day, the U.S. State Department received a red alert. An American had been arrested in North Korea, and a man named Robert King, a special envoy for North Korean human rights issues, was the one who was tasked with handling Otto's case. Robert had seen the release of more than a dozen imprisoned Americans during his seven-year career with the State Department

and he knew exactly how this would go. Robert knew that first, Otto would be forced to confess to undermining the North Korean regime. The video and tapes of the confession would then be used as domestic propaganda by the regime to convince their people that America were trying to destroy them. Next, Otto would likely be imprisoned and his freedom would be used to leverage favorable deals from the US, like nuclear concessions or loosening of sanctions, or even to get a high-level American dignitary to visit the country, to meet with Kim Jong-un and legitimize the regime on the world stage. Robert also knew that this would be very much a marathon and not a sprint. America has few intelligence assets in North Korea, so when Otto was taken, for a long time,

they couldn't even be 100% sure where he was or what was happening to him. And the problem is also that the US and North Koreans don't have a formal diplomatic relationship. The Swedish ambassador to North Korea actually stands in as Washington's liaison for American citizens in Pyongyang. So all Robert King could do for weeks after Otto's arrest was wait for the Swedes to try and find answers.

But their emails and calls were just being totally stonewalled. While all this was going on, on the 29th of February 2016, two months after his arrest, Otto was forced centre stage in an incredibly sinister press conference. You can see Otto sobbing and pleading for forgiveness and bowing deeply to apologise. Here's a clip of his statement. At the encouragement of the Z Society and the connivance of the United States administration, Here's a clip of his statement. I was taught that the DPR Korea is a mysterious, isolated communist nation from education and mass media. This made an innocent-minded, adventurous young man like myself want to show my bravery to improve my reputation and show a Western victory over the DPR Korea. During this press conference, Otto mentioned something called the Friendship United Methodist

Church. This is a church in Ohio, and apparently, according to North Korea, this church holds views that North Korea is an anti-Christian communist state that should be ended. The North Koreans accused Otto of being in league with this church and having tried to steal the poster to take it back to the church so they could use it as propaganda against North Korea. The church's senior pastor, Menash Kanyon, said, however, that Otto Warmbier was not a member of the church,

which only has a congregation of around 500 people, so he would know if the Warmbiers or Otto was a member of this church. Another interesting little twist in this case, Otto was Jewish. So what the hell he's doing, stealing posters, propaganda posters from the North Koreans for the Friendship United Methodist Church in Ohio, seems a bit beyond me. And why, if that very small church in Ohio was like, we're going to bring down North Korea, why would they send a teenage boy and tell him to steal a poster off a wall in a hotel where only tourists are allowed at least 21 but yes almost

just post-pubescent child boy man man boy to go steal a poster i mean maybe it's like when you send drugs mules you pick the innocent looking ones. Well, possibly. But even still, they're not getting him to plant a bomb, are they? I mean, you don't need to. This is enough of a fucking massive deal in North Korea, just stealing a poster off a wall. So the North Koreans said that the press conference, which is, you know, as you can hear in that clip we just played, so distressing, was held, apparently, at Otto's own request. But, like, I find this really hard to believe he's fucking hysterical he didn't call that press conference obviously they did and also

the other thing with the press conference is the things that otto says they are of course totally scripted otto uses such odd phrases that i just feel like a native english speaker wouldn't say there's one point where he talks about like i I put on my quietest boots for sneaking. Who fucking wrote this? Like Dr. Seuss, like no normal person would say that for sneaking. No normal like native English speaker that wasn't speaking to a child would speak like that. So I think it's safe to say that he was reading very rehearsed lines. And after this very public TV press conference appeal, Otto's parents asked the North Korean government to accept Otto's apology and quote, consider his youth and make an important

humanitarian gesture by allowing him to return to his loved ones. But this was, of course, a no-go. In March 2016, Otto was once again filmed as he gave a tearful statement ahead of his trial in Pyongyang. Again, Otto admitted to stealing the poster. This time, he apparently stole it in exchange for a $10,000 used car. And here is a clip from that trial. I was used and manipulated. Please, please, please save me. Please save my life. But despite all of his pleading, Otto was sentenced to 15 years of hard labour in a camp, and it seemed that all hope was lost. With the official routes all blocked, a gentleman named Bill Richardson, former governor of New Mexico and under-the-radar methods of communication to try and release hostages from hostile regimes or criminal organizations. Bill had previously

helped free several Americans from North Korea, and because of this he had a strong relationship with what was commonly called the New York Channel. This back channel is basically with the North Korean representatives at the United Nations headquarters in Manhattan. And they often serve as unofficial go-betweens for Washington and Pyongyang since there's no official diplomatic relationship in place. So, as he usually did, Bill would travel to New York to meet the New York Channel in secret. But surprisingly, soon after Otto's conviction in Pyongyang, Bill found that the usually pretty receptive and communicative New York channel was drying up. It seemed that they were having their information cut off from Kim Jong-un's inner circle. We'll come back to why this may have happened later,

so hold on to this sudden change for the moment. It became clear to Bill that to get any real answers now, they needed to go to Pyongyang. And again, he knew just what to say and how to play this. Bill knew the drill. North Korea often threatens war or nuclear action when it wants foreign aid. It will make threats, the international community will offer aid, they'll take the aid and then back down. It's a power play. They use the threat of mass nuclear destruction as a bargaining chip. So, Bill negotiated to visit Pyongyang by promising to discuss private

humanitarian aid in exchange for Otto's release. In September, a man named Mickey Bergen, who was a senior advisor to Bill Richardson, was sent to Pyongyang as an emissary. After a long drawn-out trip, Mickey was finally permitted to meet with the vice minister on his last day. And it's so funny when you read Mickey's like interview about this this trip they basically just drag the entire thing out they won't even entertain the thought of letting him see otto they drag him around to all the fucking statues and make him like look at all of that and it isn't until the very last day of his trip that he's allowed to meet the minister and when he does meet the minister again he's only told that he wasn't going to be allowed to see otto mickey left thinking that thinking that the North Koreans were just biding their time on how to release Otto

because of the upcoming 2016 presidential campaign. Mickey thought that perhaps they were waiting to see who won and how they could best leverage Otto further with the new administration. And I think this is probably exactly what the North Koreans were planning. But the thing is, something went wrong. After Trump won, relations thawed to a point that former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson even allowed a man named Joseph Yun to appeal and negotiate directly to North Korean officials about Otto's release. But still nothing.

Until that was in June, when they got a surprise call to meet the New York Channel, that the North Koreans told Yun that Otto was, quote, unconscious. Yoon said that he was completely shocked by this, but he used Otto's health as a way to try and free him, claiming that given his condition, Pyongyang had to release him on humanitarian grounds. But still, this was a no-go. The US government made a plan. Yoon was to go to Pyongyang and bring Otto home. The North Koreans were told that an American plane would soon be arriving in Pyongyang and that United States diplomats and doctors would get off. The North Koreans eventually said that the plane could land,

but still no one knew what kind of welcome the Americans would receive when they arrived. Because while the North Koreans had said that the US could send a team to see Otto, they would still have to discuss the conditions and details of actually getting Otto out once they were in Pyongyang. So a team was assembled to go and get Otto. And when they arrived in Pyongyang, they were taken to this massive opulent guest house with like marble staircases and chandeliers and a full hotel staff, though the American team did note that they seemed to be the only guests. And here, the North Koreans and the Americans entered into intense talks about Otto. But the North Koreans, whatever the Americans said, they just kept coming back to

the same point. Otto had committed a crime, so why should he get off scot-free? And to us, the stealing of a poster seems like such a minor thing, even if Otto did this. But in North Korea, disrespecting the great leader's propaganda posters is a serious breach of law. I read a report of like a janitor in a government building who accidentally knocked a poster off the wall, and he was sent to a prison camp. Exactly. So on the team that the Americans sent was a man named Dr. Michael Flukiger. Michael, in the over three decades that he had been a trauma center doctor, had seen a lot, but he would later tell of his horror at seeing Otto Warmbier's condition. After hours of conversation and negotiations, Yoon persuaded the North Koreans to let him and Dr. Flukeiger see Otto. So the North Koreans took the two men to, I thought, the ironically named Friendship Hospital, where on an isolated and empty second floor ICU room, they found 22-year-old Otto. He was pale and unconscious, laying there inert, with a feeding tube running through his nostrils.

Otto was completely unresponsive, and certainly didn't look like the picture of the homecoming king that Yoon had seen before he left. Two North Korean doctors explained to the men that Otto had arrived at the hospital this way more than a year before, and they pulled out thick, handwritten charts and several brain scans as proof. They revealed that Otto had suffered extensive brain damage. Dr. Flukiger examined

Otto, but the truth had been evident at first sight. Otto, the man he had been, was gone, although he had obviously improved since coming into the hospital, because Dr. Flukiger could see that Otto had a tracheotomy scar on his throat, so clearly machines had once breathed for him. But now Otto was breathing on his own. Otto was in a once breathed for him. But now Otto was breathing on his own. Otto was in a state of unresponsive wakefulness, meaning he still possessed basic reflexes but no longer showed signs of awareness. The North Koreans made Dr. Flukiker sign a note saying that Otto had been well cared for, and he did it. He said he would have done it anyway if it meant getting Otto home. But Dr.

Flukiker did say that Otto must have been well cared for. He didn't have a single bedsore and for a patient who had been comatose for a year and a half. That is remarkable. Finally, the next day after negotiations that had dragged through the night, a judge commuted Otto's sentence and he was released. But the celebrations were hushed. Otto was not in a good condition and his arrival back on US soil was really something. When Otto was returned, his parents were horrified. To his dad, Fred Warmbier, the evidence of torture seemed clear. Reports state that Otto was severely brain damaged and a lot of reports suggest that his formerly straight teeth were now misaligned and

there was a huge scar on his foot. Otto's head had been shaved, he was blind, he was deaf and some reports claim that as he arrived back to the US and was being taken off the plane he was howling and convulsing. His parents said that Otto was jerking uncontrollably and making quote inhuman sounds when they met him on the plane that brought him back. The North Korean said that Otto had ended up in this situation because of botulism, but the US doctors detected no signs of botulism in Otto. In a report I watched with Otto's mum Cindy, she said they destroyed him, which I thought was just such a horrifying statement, that phrase. It's chilling and I feel nothing but absolute sympathy for his family.

But despite their horror at Otto's condition when they first saw him, Cindy and Fred, his parents, were initially really optimistic that their son, now back in the US, would make a full recovery. But within 48 hours of his return, Otto had a fever that had risen to 104 degrees. And at this point, doctors broke the news to Otto's family that their son would never be cognizant again, and they directed that his feeding tube be removed.

Fred and Cindy lived at his bedside until six days after returning home. Otto died. And now, after his death, the drama really began. The Wombis were livid, and rightly so. They felt, quote, humiliated by North Korea, and they were angry at the US government feeling that not enough had been done by the most powerful country in the world to get their son back. But the thing is, no one expected this to go down the way that it did. Americans and other foreigners have been arrested and imprisoned in North Korea

before, and the majority of them have lived to tell the tale. So any accusations that the government didn't do enough to secure Otto's release, they were informed the very same day. They put their most experienced man on the job. I think they did everything they could do. I just think no one thought that this would happen to Otto. Oh, no way. Like, there wouldn't be tourist young pioneer groups of young Americans

going around North Korea if this was happening all over the place. No, this is unprecedented what happened. Absolutely. So basically, the people other than Otto had been arrested before in North Korea, they became proxies by which the North Korean state can punish its global enemies. But most of them who tell their stories say that they never faced physical torture like the North Korean prisoners did. They were too valuable. They're political prisoners, essentially. Like if they're using them as a bargaining chip with other nation states to legitimize the North Korean regime, they're political prisoners. So no one could have really predicted that Otto would end up in the situation he did. So what really happened to Otto? He was physically harmed, that much is obvious.

But the evidence is not really clear cut. However, the message coming out of the White House was that Otto had been tortured at the hands of North Koreans and the Wambiers agreed. They went on national television in the US to declare that Otto has been, quote, systematically tortured and intentionally injured. But the day after this blistering interview that they gave, a coroner who had examined Otto, Dr. Lakshmi Kode Samarko, unexpectedly called a press conference of her own. She explained that she hadn't previously spoken up out of respect for the Wambirs, but her findings and those of the doctors who had cared for Otto after he returned to the US contradicted the Wambirs' assertions that Otto

had been tortured. Fred and many news outlets had described Otto's teeth as having been rearranged, almost like they had been moved around with pliers. But Samarko reiterated that the post-mortem exam found that Otto's teeth were natural and in good repair. She also stated that she discovered no significant scars and dismissed the one on his foot as not being indicative of anything definitive. According to Dr. Samarco, other signs of physical trauma were also lacking. For example, and I think this is really important, both sides of Otto's brain had suffered simultaneously, meaning that he had been starved of oxygen. Blows to the head, however, like we might expect to see if these injuries were as a result of a beating, would have likely resulted

in asymmetric rather than universal damage. And I think this is really important to note. What she's saying is if he'd been beaten, you would have just seen damage to one side. Otto had simultaneous universal brain damage. It doesn't seem like it came from a beating or head trauma. Or botulism either. I don't imagine that does a universal job on the brain. The Wombis declined a surgical autopsy. And at first, I was really surprised by this. I was like, he's come back in a coma.

We don't really know what happened to him. The Koreans are saying it was botulism. They can't detect it. But no surgical autopsy when his murder, his death, whatever happened to him is a mystery. And I don't know if this was the case here or not for sure, because I couldn't find this information. But remember that the Wombis are Jewish. And there have been cases where Orthodox Jews and Muslims do reject invasive autopsies on religious grounds. And there is precedent for this being upheld by the high courts.

So it could have been that was the reason they refused a surgical autopsy. So with the non-invasive scans that they were able to carry out, Dr. Samarko had found no hairline bone fractures or other evidence of prior trauma. According to Dr. Samarko, quote, his body was in excellent condition. So it doesn't seem like he was being held in a prison camp being systematically beaten. Because no, how are you coming out of that without any fractures? And even if they had healed, they'd be able to see it in

the scans, surely. I find it very, very difficult to believe and perhaps this is quite an unpopular opinion. But I find it very difficult to believe if he had sustained systematic abuse in a prison camp in North Korea that there would be not a scratch on him if that is what had happened. And also this is in alignment, remember, with what Dr. Flukiger thought when he had seen Otto for the first time in Pyongyang.

The fact that he didn't have any bed sores, the fact that, you know, his tracheotomy scar had healed and he was now breathing on his own. It seems like Otto was well looked after, if no other time than at least after he fell into his coma. Dr. Samarko agrees with this. She says he would have had to have had round-the-clock care to be able to maintain Otto's skin in the condition it was in when she got him. Remember, he was comatose for at least a year and a half. So Dr. Samarko and us definitely

are not trying to undermine Fred and Cindy Warmbier. The worst thing imaginable has happened to them, to their son and to their family. They are grieving. But the thing is, these are the facts. And then if these are the facts, that still then leaves us with the question of what really happened to Otto Warmbier. Unless we find someone who was there at the time, we're never going to know for certain. But the guesses that we'll make are the best that we've got. The problem with discovering the truth of events that happened in North Korea is that this is a huge challenge that even American intelligence agencies like the CIA struggle

with. But Otto's post-arrest life isn't as much of a black hole of no information as is often claimed. Like we said, other people have been arrested and detained in North Korea. In fact, 15 Americans have been imprisoned in North Korea since 1996. And using their stories, it's possible to try and piece together Otto's likely day-to-day life. The human rights abuses of the North Korean regime are well known. Their notorious prison camps are estimated to hold up to 120,000 people. And they're in horrendous conditions for crimes as minor as watching banned South Korean soap operas. They truly are some of the worst places on earth. The lucky survive on starvation rations while enduring routine beatings and dangerous enforced labour.

The not so lucky are tortured to death. But as we said before, it's unlikely that that is the fate Otto would have endured. Andrei Lankov, director of the Korea Risk Group, said that he didn't believe that Otto had been physically tortured. And we should explain what the Korea Risk Group is. It's an independent specialist information firm that delivers qualified research and analysis on North Korea to both the private and public sector in over 30 countries. They specialise in all matters impacting North Korea. Governments use their insights to help inform international policy, so it's safe to say that they are most definitely seen as experts in this field.

An American man named Kenneth Bay, who was held by the North Koreans, said, Otto would have absolutely, without a shadow of a doubt, been psychologically tortured, probably being relentlessly interrogated daily until his forced confession. Kenneth said when he was imprisoned by North Korea, he was questioned for up to 15 hours a day, every day for two months. I mean, just imagine what that would do to you. And if this was done to Otto, which it probably was, I don't think the goal was to extract the truth necessarily because the North Koreans had already decided that Otto had done it.

And I'm sure that he confessed very quickly, whether he did it or not. I think that the months that they held him before bringing him out into that press conference in March 2016 was to construct the story that Otto read off the handwritten notes at the now infamous news conference. And maybe hanging about for the US election as well. And the thing is, if you're thinking, well, we're being very quick to jump to the conclusion that he wasn't physically tortured. No previous American detainee has ever accused North Korea of using physical force to extract a confession. That just

doesn't seem to be the thing. It seems to be very much psychological torture. Perhaps if Otto had protested his innocence and refused to confess, maybe he could have received warnings similar to that of a man named Owen Jeffrey Fowle, who was detained by the North Koreans two years before Otto. The North Koreans told Owen, if you don't start cooperating, things are going to become less pleasant, which does sound like threats of physical torture. But Otto is so young, I just don't believe that he wouldn't have just confessed to it. As you were talking just then, I was thinking about,

like, what would his reasons be for holding out? And I just think, even if you're the proudest person in the world, if you're 21 and you're in North Korea on your own you're just going to say you did it I would how many cases have we seen where people make false confession once he's out of North Korea it doesn't count he's not going to go back to America and be put in prison for this he just needs to get out and then he can go back to normal so he has uh much more to gain by just giving them what they want he just needs to be sent home I guess he has to believe. He just needs to be sent home. I guess he has to believe that he's going to be sent home if he confesses, but who knows what they were telling him. But I think the key thing with the physical torture side of it is you have to think of what

is North Korea's true motivations. It's not to randomly capture this guy and torture him. What would be the purpose? It's to use him as political leverage. Keeping Otto Wombe in good condition is way more important to their larger global and political goals than just torturing a random student. It's not worth it. Now, all of the Americans who have been held by North Korea do, however, say that the interrogators tried to bludgeon you into, quote, mental submission. They were all repeatedly told that their government had forgotten them and they were given so little hope of ever being free. Kenneth Bae, our North Korean survivor, said that, quote, being imprisoned in North Korea was lonely, isolating and frustrating.

I was on trial for all of America. So I had to accept that I had no control and there was no way of getting out of impending punishment. So just imagine what Otto would have been feeling because while some previous detainees were allowed letters from home, it seemed that North Korea denied Otto any contact with the outside world. It seemed that Otto's only respite from the interrogations was likely watching North Korean propaganda films. Clockwork Orange really, isn't it? It's unbelievable. The trauma of all of this has sent previous detainees into crushing depressions

and even driven some to attempt suicide. We'll post the footage of his news conference confession. In it, Otto looks physically healthy, but he sobs for his freedom. It's not hard to be chilled by his extreme and very obvious intense mental distress. Two weeks later in mid-March, as Otto was filmed after being sentenced to 15 years of hard labour, his body still looked whole, but his expression was vacant, and he had to be supported by two guards as he was dragged out of the courthouse, as if the life had drained out of him.

The footage of him being walked slash dragged out of the courtroom is quite shocking. He's dressed nicely and he looks clean and healthy, but he's totally limp, like he's on the verge of becoming catatonic. And the reports basically all assume that Otto suffered his brain damage in around about April. That is the, like, last time we see him is in March, and then after April, you don't ever see him again. So I think it's a fair assessment to make that this almost happened pretty much immediately after a sentencing. And also remember when we said before that the New York Channel with Washington had suddenly gone cold about that time in April. The US State Department thinks that this is when Otto's injury happened. And that's why they stopped communicating. I think they were desperately trying to fix him before the US found out and

they just couldn't do it. That's why they took such good care of him. And the thing is, the general consensus had been that the tragedy may have occurred at a special labor camp for foreigners. And this is where US citizens like Kenneth Bae were held. They were forced to plant soybeans or like make bricks. And Kenneth Bae acknowledges that, quote, compared to the average North Korean serving time in a labor camp, I was in a four star resort. So again, even if they are held in prison camps, they are held in specialist camps, they are held in specialist, like, foreigner prison camps that are much nicer than the fucking gulags that the rest of the country is held in. And given all of this, and the timelines within which all of this would

have happened, it seems unlikely that Otto ever even made it to a labour camp, to be honest. It seems to have happened so quickly after he was sentenced that I think he never even made it to a labor camp, to be honest. It seems to have happened so quickly after he was sentenced that I think he never even made it to a camp. And the thing is, it's not just Andrei Lankov, the director from the Korea Risk Group. Many other experts also point out that North Korea may be brutal, but it's not stupid. Just look, for example, at its ability as such a small, impoverished country to maintain its relative power on the world stage the way that it does? What incentive would they have to lose a valuable bargaining chip like Otto, especially when they had never been so irrational before?

15 to 16 Americans have been held since 1996. They'd never killed any of them. Why suddenly start now? It seems to make much more sense that Otto was treated like all other imprisoned Americans and that somehow an unexpected catastrophe occurred. So could it have been an accident? Maybe an allergic reaction? Did Otto react badly to something and this caused the unconsciousness? But another possibility we have to discuss is that given the thinking that Otto's brain damage seems to have happened immediately after his sentencing, to 15 years in a hard labor camp, after he's been told for months that the US government cannot help him,

they've given up on him, they've forgotten him, did Otto attempt suicide? So what else did he have to look forward to but physical and mental suffering? At least two Americans we know of who were imprisoned in North Korea have attempted suicide. After failing to cut his wrists, Ijon Gomez chewed open a thermometer and drank its mercury. He survived and later explained that he had given up on America's ability to free him. For all of the mystery of this case, one thing that is certain is that the Trump administration allowed the narrative that Otto was repeatedly being beaten to spread, long after it was clear those intelligence reports were almost certainly wrong. Andrei Lankov believes that, quote, the campaign to make Otto a symbol of North Korea's

cruelty was psychological preparation to justify military operations by the US. The thing with this is North Korea want to use Otto or wanted to use Otto as propaganda there. And to some extent, the US government tried to use Otto as propaganda to justify taking military action against North Korea. And don't get us wrong, applying maximum pressure to North Korea for an American citizen ending up brain damaged in its custody is fair enough. But in doing so, the Trump administration lied to everyone. And most importantly, they lied to the Warmbier family. In the immediate aftermath of Otto's death, after highlighting the story that Otto was physically tortured repeatedly, Trump praised Fred and Cindy as good friends and invited them to high profile events like the State of the

Union. And to this day, Fred and Cindy Warmbier state that their son was tortured to death. They can't listen to the results that come out of the autopsy that was allowed to be performed. They can't take that on board. They are convinced that their son was tortured to death. And it's hard not to feel heartbroken for this family who are living with the belief that their son's last conscious moments on this earth were spent in fear and physical agony as he was tortured to death in a faraway country, believing that no one was coming to rescue him. But there's no denying that they believe this as a result of the administration's unwillingness to acknowledge a different version of events. One, to be honest, that is supported by the facts. I suppose if we're talking about

a suicide attempt, one that would damage his brain in that way. I mean, we're talking about him holding his breath, really, but that's basically impossible. I don't know what he could have done. I mean, poisons that couldn't be detected after the months that he had been still held by the North Koreans. Maybe he tried to strangle himself and the ligature marks would have long healed by the time anyone saw him. Oh, that's a very good point. Yeah, that's a good point. That is the fastest way probably to starve your brain of oxygen. And it does seem that Trump and his administration made a pretty big pivot in standing by the Wambirs and saying that this was the action of a hostile state and

saying that it was a state-sanctioned extrajudicial killing. But now Trump is saying that he believes Kim Jong-un when he says that he had nothing to do with it, despite what his own intelligence agencies tell him. So given this turnaround, the Wombeers last week gave a statement that sounds very like a thinly veiled attack of their former supporter Donald Trump. They say, quote, we have been respectful during this summit process. Now we must speak out. Kim and his evil regime are responsible for unimaginable cruelty and inhumanity. No excuses or lavish praise can change that. And it really does now seem that the story of Otto being brutally beaten

has outlived its usefulness. I hate the people out there being like, well, he deserved it. There's this woman who was like a lecturer at this university who was like, well, what do you expect? This stupid young white guy goes there and thinks that he can act however he wants like he acts however he wants in the US the North Koreans won't stand for it go fuck yourself you stupid woman well that's like those people who are like oh well those girls who got acid thrown in their face in stonetown deserved it it's not an argument and I'm glad to say that that woman lost her job blaming Otto is pointless

he did nothing that would have justified what happened to him. We don't know what happened. In my opinion, the shock sent Otto into a state of despair that he thought he was never going to be free of this situation. And I think that Otto tried to kill himself. And that's what led to his coma. And the North Koreans freaked out, tried to fix him, couldn't fix him, sent him back to the US and he died. Kept him in the most pristine condition they possibly could thanks for listening guys we know it's a bit of a different one we thought it was really interesting and we hope you did too and next week it's going to be a

bit different this has been in the pipes where i feel like my entire life next week we've got a guest on the show and it's the magnificent tracy clayton is joining us for a very special episode about the central Park Five. So if you listened this far to the end of the episode, congratulations on your top secret information. That happens all the time. People are like, what's happened with this? I'm like, well, we said we just said at the end. We are so excited.

Like Hannah went to New York, went to a proper studio with proper podcasting goddess Tracy Clayton. It was the best day of my life. I was still under my duvet in my bedroom. So it wasn't the best day of my life. But it was a pretty good day for me as well. Watch this space. Yeah. And we'll see you next time. Follow us on the social medias.

If you would like to give us some money, you can do that on patreon.com forward slash red handed. And it does make a difference because yesterday was the last day at my job. And that's because of you so thank you very much anna is now a full-time podcaster i am how millennial do you feel so millennial i don't even know what i'm gonna do tomorrow i haven't computed that i'm not going into the office tomorrow i don't know what the fuck i'm gonna go i'm probably gonna go to like a juice shop buy some skinny jeans jeans. I don't know. I don't know what I'm going to do. Tomorrow is the start of my new life, guys.

And I have no idea what I'm going to do. And no, that is absolutely, as Hannah said, it's completely down to you guys. We couldn't be doing it like this if it wasn't for you. And it's not just because Hannah is now pursuing her dream, though that is a major part of this. It's also because now we can like do extra shit for you guys. We can, you know, spend longer doing the research. We can do longer episodes, all of that good shit that we know you guys want. So here are the people who have been absolutely phenomenal in donating money this month, this month, this week, jet lag. Georgia Harris, thank you. Rhiannon Garrett,

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Samantha Rorman, Elizabeth Nesenthaler, Gillian Spilchuck and Liz McGough. Thank you, guys. I don't have to go to work tomorrow. Because of you. Because of all of you. So thank you. Fabulous. I'm Jake Warren and in our first season of Finding I set out on a very personal quest to find the woman who saved my mum's life You can listen to Finding Natasha right now

exclusively on Wondery Plus In season 2 I found myself caught up in a new journey to help someone I've never even met. But a couple of years ago, I came across a social media post by a person named Loti. It read in part, Three years ago today that I attempted to jump off this bridge, but this wasn't my time to go. A gentleman named Andy saved my life. I still haven't found him.

This is a story that I came across purely by chance, but it instantly moved me, and it's taken me to a place where I've had to consider some deeper issues around mental health. This is season two of Finding, and this time, if all goes to plan, we'll be finding Andy. You can listen to Finding Andy and Finding Natasha

exclusively and ad-free on Wondery+. Join Wondery in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify. He was hip-hop's biggest mogul, the man who redefined fame, fortune, and the music industry. The first male rapper to be honored on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, Sean Diddy Combs. Diddy built an empire and lived a life most people only dream about. Everybody know ain't no party like a Diddy party, so. Yeah, that's what's up. But just as quickly as his empire rose, it came crashing down.

Today I'm announcing the unsealing of a three-count indictment, charging Sean Combs with racketeering conspiracy, sex trafficking, interstate transportation for prostitution. I was f***ed up. I hit rock bottom, but I made no excuses. with racketeering conspiracy, sex trafficking, interstate transportation for prostitution. I was f***ed up. I hit rock bottom, but I made no excuses. I'm disgusted. I'm so sorry.

Until you're wearing an orange jumpsuit, it's not real. Now it's real. From his meteoric rise to his shocking fall from grace, from law and crime, this is The Rise and Fall of Diddy. Listen to The Rise and Fall of Diddy exclusively with Wondery+.