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WASHINGTON – North Korea has billed Trump $ 2 million for the medical care of Otto F. Warmbier, a jailed American student who has fallen into a coma, before agreeing to release him in 2017.
A senior US diplomat, negotiating for Mr. Warmbier's freedom, accepted the bill and released Mr. Warmbier. He died six days later in the United States after his parents decided to end the maintenance of life that maintained its vegetative state.
The bill was passed from the State Department to the Treasury Department. By early 2018, the bill had not been paid and it is unclear whether the Trump administration has since sent part of the amount to North Korea. A payment would be widely perceived as a remittance of ransom money, thus going against the declared policy of the administration in the matter of hostage negotiations.
The account of North Korea's bill was first reported by the Washington Post on Thursday. A person familiar with the events confirmed the details in the New York Times.
"We do not comment on the negotiations on the hostages, which explains their success during this administration", Sarah Huckabee Sanders, White House press secretary, said Thursday.
Officials from the State Department and the Treasury declined to comment.
Warmbier's death remained a lingering shadow over relations between the United States and North Korea, even as President Trump enthusiastically opened diplomatic talks with Kim Jong-un, the leader of North Korea. , with a view to ending its nuclear weapons program.
At a February summit meeting in Vietnam between the two leaders, Trump was questioned at a press conference about whether he and Kim had discussed Mr. Warmbier's fate. Mr. Trump said, "He tells me he does not know about it and I will take it at his word."
Warmbier's parents, Fred and Cindy Warmbier, then issued a statement that "Kim and his evil regime are responsible for the death of our son Otto".
Mr. Warmbier was a student from the University of Virginia originally from Ohio who had participated in a tour of North Korea in December 2015. In early January 2016, just before leaving the capital Pyongyang, he was arrested for attempting to remove a propaganda poster from a hotel. He was sentenced in March to 15 years in prison and forced labor, but fell into a coma while in detention. American doctors have never been able to determine the cause.
In June 2017, North Korean officials told US diplomats that Mr. Warmbier was in a coma. Joseph Yun, the former special representative of North Korea, went to Pyongyang to negotiate his release. An American doctor who accompanied him examined Mr. Warmbier, who was in a coma for most of his 17 months in prison.
The North Korean representatives presented Mr. Yun with the $ 2 million bill and asked him to sign a payment agreement before leaving with Mr. Warmbier.
In December, Warmbier's parents sued North Korea in a US court after the death of their son and were awarded $ 501 million. Parents are unlikely to ever receive the money from Mr. Kim's government.
North Korea released three US prisoners in May 2018, a month before Trump and Kim hold their first summit meeting in Singapore.
In 2016, Mr Trump criticized President Barack Obama for giving Iran $ 400 million, supposedly to reimburse Iran for military equipment bought before the 1979 Islamic Revolution. The Iranian government was trying to recover this money for decades.
Mr. Trump and other Republican politicians said the $ 400 million was a ransom for four American prisoners released from Iran in January 2016 after successful negotiations on a nuclear deal.
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