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Medical staff met on board a plane carrying Otto Warmbier, who remained in a coma after being incarcerated in North Korea in March 2016. (John Minchillo / AP)
BEIJING – North Korea has issued a $ 2 million bill for hospital care of the American Otto Warmbier, in a coma, insisting that a US official pledged to pay her before to be allowed to send the student from the University of Virginia to Pyongyang in 2017.
The presentation of the bill – which had not been previously disclosed by US or North Korean authorities – was extremely daring, even for a regime known for its aggressive tactics.
The main US envoy responsible for recovering Warmbier signed an agreement to pay the medical bill on instructions from President Trump, according to two people close to the situation. They spoke under the guise of anonymity because they were not allowed to discuss the case in public.
The bill was paid to the Treasury Department, where it remained – unpaid – throughout 2017, said the people. However, it is unclear whether the Trump administration paid the bill afterwards or whether it was addressed during preparations for its two summits with Kim Jong Un.
The White House declined to comment. "We are not commenting on the hostage negotiations, which is why they have been so successful during this administration," White House press secretary Sarah Sanders said in an e-mail.
Trump, on September 30, claimed that his administration was paying "nothing" for the US "hostages" of North Korea.
Warmbier, who was 21, fell into a coma for unknown reasons the night he was sentenced to 15 years in prison with hard labor in March 2016.
He was found guilty of having removed a propaganda placard at a hotel in Pyongyang in the early hours of January 1, 2016. Such an offense would be minor in almost all countries, but in North Korea it was considered a criminal offense. "Hostile act". against the state. "
Fred Warmbier, Otto's father, said he had never been informed of the hospital bill. He said it sounded like a "ransom" for his dead son.
After his trial, Warmbier is escorted to the Supreme Court of Pyongyang, North Korea, in March 2016. (Jon Chol Jin / AP)
After his conviction, the North Koreans kept the student in a coma for another 15 months, without even telling the US authorities that in June 2017 that he had been unconscious for all that time. The news of his condition sparked a frantic effort led by Joseph Yun, the head of the State Department for North Korea at the time, to bring Warmbier home.
[[[[How the case Otto Warmbier is booming on Trump]
Yun and an emergency medical doctor, Michael Flueckiger, traveled to Pyongyang on a medical evacuation plane. They were taken to the Friendship Hospital in the Diplomatic District, a clinic where only foreigners are treated, and found Warmbier lying in a room with the inscription "Intensive Care Unit" , not responding and having a feeding tube in the nose.
Flueckiger examined Warmbier and questioned the two North Korean doctors, who carried a thick pile of cards, questions about lab work, scans, and x-rays they had done.
Then they went to a meeting room where talks to free Warmbier began.
"I did not know how much negotiation was going to be negotiated to secure his release," said Flueckiger, medical director of Phoenix Air Group, a Cartersville, Georgia-based aerospace company specializing in medical evacuations.
The North Korean authorities have asked the doctor to write a report on his findings. "I had the impression that if I did not provide them with a document that I could sign, that would cause problems," Flueckiger said during an interview.
But the American said he was not forced to lie in his report. No matter what happened to put Warmbier in this state, it was "obvious" that he had received "very good care" at the hospital, he said. The doctors had performed "state-of-the-art resuscitation" to revive Warmbier after a catastrophic collapse of the cardiovascular system, and it was "remarkable" not to have bed sores, Flueckiger said.
"Would I have lied to get him out of there? Maybe I would have done it, he says. "But I did not have to answer that question."
Yun, however, was faced with a more difficult situation.
The North Korean authorities handed him a $ 2 million bill, insisting that he sign a payment agreement before allowing him to bring Warmbier home, according to the two people aware of the situation.
Yun called the then Secretary of State, Rex Tillerson, and told him about the bill. Tillerson called Trump. They ordered their envoy to sign the paper agreeing that he would pay the $ 2 million, said the two people.
Flueckiger discussed the medical aspects of the Warmbier evacuation but said he was not allowed to discuss diplomatic negotiations.
[‘He tells me he didn’t know’: Trump defends Kim over death of Otto Warmbier]
A spokesman for the state department and Yun, who retired early 2018, both declined to comment. Tillerson, the Treasury Department and North Korea's US affairs envoy, based in his US mission in New York, did not respond to requests for comment.
Warmbier's brain damage to North Korea and the ensuing death caused widespread shock in the United States, but the news that North Korea was waiting for the government to pay for his care provoked new reactions.
"It's outrageous." They killed a student in perfect health and happy, then had the audacity to wait for the US government to pay for his care, "said Greg Scarlatoiu, director executive of the Human Rights Committee in North Korea.
Fred and Cindy Warmbier attend President Trump's State of the Union address in 2018. (Mark Wilson / Getty Images)
After signing the documentation and securing the release of Warmbier, Yun and Flueckiger flew to Cincinnati to return the young man to his parents. Otto Warmbier died six days later, but the cause of his severe brain damage was never determined.
Fred Warmbier accused North Korea of having beaten and tortured him in detention, although doctors who examined him at the Cincinnati University Medical Center said he was not safe. There was no evidence of that. His parents asked that no autopsy be performed.
North Korea insisted that Warmbier became ill after eating pork and spinach, but he also stated that he had a severe allergic reaction to the sedatives administered to him.
The director of the North American Friendship Hospital in North Korea said the family's accusations that Warmbier was dead as a result of torture would be a "total distortion of the truth."
"The American doctors who came. . . to help the repatriation of Warmbier acknowledged that all his health indicators were normal and sent a letter of insurance to our hospital in which they shared the result of the diagnosis of the doctors of our hospital, "said the director of the hospital , quoted last October, in an anonymous newspaper.
Fred and Cindy Warmbier sued North Korea for the death of their son. In December, they received $ 501 million in damages – an amount the Kim plan will never pay. Judge Beryl A. Howell, of the US District Court of Columbia, said it was "appropriate to punish and deter North Korea" for "torture, hostage taking and theft". 39, extrajudicial killing of Otto Warmbier ".
The Warmbiers blamed Kim for the death of their son, but Trump said he believed the North Korean leader claimed he did not know the treatment of the student.
"I do not think it would have allowed this to happen," Trump said in Hanoi in February after his second summit with Kim. Trump said that he had told Kim about Warmbier's death and that it "felt bad about it".
"He told me he was not aware of it and I believe him on his word," Trump said in February.
North Korea has already taken Americans hostage and this is not the first time that Pyongyang has threatened huge hospital bills for detained US citizens.
Kenneth Bae, a Christian and diabetic missionary who was detained in North Korea for almost two years, said he would have been charged 600 euros a day for his care at the hospital's friendship . The bill for his first stay at the hospital in detention rose to 101,000 euros, or about $ 120,000 at the time, wrote Bae in his memoir, "Not Forgotten".
At the end of his detention in November 2014, after another stay at the hospital, Bae had calculated that the North Koreans would charge him $ 300,000. In the end, he was released without paying anything.
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