Otto Warbeer, an American college student, was detained in North Korea in 2016 after allegedly removing a propaganda poster from a restricted hotel floor, spending 18 months in detention before dying in a coma in 2017, raising questions about North Korea's treatment of foreign prisoners and the political motivations behind his case.
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Otto Wararmbeer and his tour group were staying at what can only be described as a luxury five-star hotel. The hotel is very clearly targeted for foreigners, international travelers, tourist rather than the locals. I guess if you force me to come up with some sort of comparison, I would say maybe like a resort in Vegas. It's the kind of hotel that feels like a city. Like everything the guest could possibly want or need is inside the hotel. They've got amenities.
They've got a barber shop. They've got everything. So, there's really no reason to leave. The rooms and the bathrooms were nicely kept. They were clean. There were over a thousand guest rooms in the hotel. It is a massive structure. And outside of that, there's just endless things to do. You've got five different restaurants you can eat at. There's a swimming pool, a full casino, a sauna, bowling alley, karaoke bar, pool tables, ping pong table rooms. There's a suit store that you can get a full custom suit if you need it for a business meeting. Wow.
>> A hair salon, a barber shop, a massage spa, and at the very top floor, the 47th floor, there is a revolving restaurant.
You can sit by the window, eat a nice hearty dinner while you get like this panoramic view of the entire city. A lot of people called it paradise in a hotel.
It's the Garden of Eden in this country, if you will. There's only two unsettling things about this hotel. This sounds like an urban legend. This is so true.
Okay, there are over a thousand guest rooms and the hotel is almost always empty.
Sometimes there's music playing, but if there is, it's always the same few songs on a loop.
Sometimes there's no music playing and you just walk around in silence.
It's a little unsettling, but I'm sure most people get over it. Most places do have their slow times for tourists. But there's one other thing. People notice this every time they step onto the elevator. It's almost become an urban legend truly to you go into the elevator, you're about to click the button for your floor. Your hand pauses at the buttons for like a brief second.
It's it's such a small detail that we would take for granted, but when it's not there, it sparks so much curiosity.
The fifth floor is missing. There's no button to click. It goes 1 2 3 4 6.
There's not even a star in place of it.
And there is no superstition about the number five in this country. So it's not like how in certain Asian countries there's no fourth floor or sometimes the 13th floor is replaced by a star.
There's none of that. The fifth floor exists, but it is absolutely forbidden for guests to enter the fifth floor.
Look, whatever this hotel has got on the fifth floor, they don't want you snooping around to the point that they don't even have an elevator entrance to the floor. It's not like a staff has to put in a key and then it opens to the staff floor. That makes sense, right?
No, there is no button altogether. The only way to the fifth floor is through a back staircase that is marked staff only.
>> Oh, so you have to walk there.
>> Yes, guests are strictly prohibited. The entire floor is restricted. If the hotel is the Garden of Eden, this is the forbidden fruit. So, there's three types of people that go to this hotel. one who notices it thinks, you know, that's really strange, but they move on with their day. Okay, then you got the second group of people, the ones who notice it, it bothers them, but by the time that they fall asleep that night, wake up the next morning, they've forgotten about it. And three, the type of people whose curiosity would kill them if they didn't figure out what is on that floor.
And there was only one way to find out.
In the early hours of January 1st, 2016, CCTV footage would show a supposed guest trespassing on the fifth floor, taking an artwork off the walls. So, they took it off the walls, tried to roll it up, presumably to bring it home with them from their vacation, like a free stolen souvenir, I guess. When they realized that they weren't able to hide it, smuggle it out the fifth floor, they abandoned the idea along with the artwork on the floor. They didn't hang it back up. They just put it on the floor. It is unclear from the footage who this guest even was. I mean, it's so pixelated. It's a dark hooded figure in black. You don't even see their face.
You can't even make out how tall they are. They look kind of like a monster.
They look so tall in the hallway for some reason.
>> Huh. Okay.
>> But the only thing that's certain is someone's going to pay for this because this is the Yangakto International Hotel in North Korea. And in North Korea, it seems no deed good or bad goes unpunished.
60 days later, an American college student would be begging North Korea for forgiveness at a press conference that the whole world tuned into. He would cry out sobbing, "I beg for your forgiveness. I beg for any assistance to save my life. I have made the single worst decision of my life.
>> Please, I make the worst mistake of my life."
>> For about a year and a half, he would be detained in North Korea. It would be a diplomatic night.
So, let's get into what happened to Otto Warbeer. Otto's case happened 2016 through 2017 and is considered to be resolved as of today. But the case is back in the news because recently something very, very bizarre happened.
An American soldier by the name of Travis King was visiting the DMZ on July 18th, 2023. So like a month ago.
>> Okay. DMZ.
>> DMZ is the demilitarized zone. This is the border between South Korea and North Korea. It is heavily guarded.
Technically, they're still at war. I mean, you've got North Korean soldiers on one side, South Korean and American troops on one side. It you can take tours there. Yeah. There's like gift shops and restaurants you can eat at, but you're basically just looking through the border and you know, I don't know. I've never been. My parents are like, "Please don't go." So, you can take tours. That's all there is.
Allegedly, Travis had been facing misconduct charges in the army. So, he's an American soldier that was based in South Korea. And while he was based in South Korea, he um did a few things that probably weren't acceptable. Apparently, he assaulted civilians at a bar. He damaged a police car. He actually served a couple months in prison for these crimes and he was getting sent back to the US for military disciplinary proceedings potentially to be dishonorably discharged.
>> But instead of boarding his scheduled flight back home, he leaves the airport.
Okay. So Travis King was escorted to the airport, he leaves the airport in an airport, goes to take a tour at the DMZ line.
>> Wait, so >> yeah, >> so there's nobody following him.
>> I guess once they got through security, they're like, >> "Okay, bye." So, he escaped the airport.
>> Yeah.
>> Okay.
>> Went to the DMZ tour, bought a black t-shirt and a hat from the gift shop before heading to the border with his tour group. And then he broke out into a sprint and ran into North Korea while quote laughing hysterically.
At first, most of the tour group thought that someone was filming him. And this was like a bit for Tik Tok that he was going to stop running when he like right got to the border and then the clip would look like it was he was running into North Korea, but it would cut at that second. But then soldiers nearby started screaming, "Get that guy."
It wasn't enough time to respond. Tour group witnesses said they saw him run, run, run, and then disappear out of sight. It was all over within seconds.
He was across the border into North Korea. The soldiers immediately rushed all the tourists to a building and everyone had to give their statements.
Nobody could even believe what just happened. I mean, they knew that Travis was alone in the tour and not really engaging with the others. You know, when you're alone, you're traveling, you're in a tour group, you try to make conversation. He wasn't doing that. But this is unfathomable. Who willingly crosses the border into North Korea?
What is often known as the hermit country of the world? The only news that comes out of North Korea is not good news. His mom said that she can't imagine him doing something like that.
While his uncle stated that he was just he was going through a lot. His seven-year-old cousin had recently died from a rare genetic condition months before. He was potentially facing racism in South Korea. So, it was a whole lot of um I guess confusion. People just didn't know why he would do that. What happened? Like what is going on? What is North Korea even going to do with him?
Regardless, his mother said, "I just want him back home. I want him to come back to America. I just can't see him doing something like this.
>> So, do we know where he is?
>> Yeah, he has been detained by North Korea.
And we have no clue as of right now, first of all, why he willingly went into North Korea. I mean, North Korea is not an appealing country for most of the world, but especially for American citizens. The country has a long complicated history of absolutely despising America. and him being an American soldier is probably not the great position to be in in a country like that.
We have no idea why he left, but the US stated that he crossed willingly and without authorization, saying like, "We didn't tell him to do this cuz, you know, he's part of the army. So, don't get it twisted, North Korea. We didn't tell him."
>> We don't know what's going on with Travis. We don't know what he's being detained for. We don't know what's going to happen during his detainment. We have no idea. All we know is he is the first American to be detained by North Korea in the last 5 years.
The only thing that people are hoping for right now is they hope that whatever happened to Otto Warbeer doesn't happen to Travis.
So what happened to Otto? There is this tour company. It's still up and running.
Okay. It's called Young Pioneer Tours.
Their motto is destinations your mother would rather you stay away from. So yeah, Young Pioneer Tours lets you visit North Korea. They do tours there, which you would never imagine because North Korea, like I said, is one of the most repressive, closed off, secretive countries in the world. Nobody really goes in and even fewer people come out.
So, you would think that their tourism industry is sad. It's collapsed, non-existent. But no, they see thousands of tourists every single year.
Tourists are allowed in on tightly controlled tours. They're watched all the time. Literally every second of all the time. It's speculated. Every hotel that foreigners are allowed to stay at, which is just a handful. They're bugged.
This is a theory. We're going to get to it later, but there have been videos that showed old old school radios in all the guest rooms of these hotels. And the older radios have like 70 wires coming out of it. And people are like, "No radio needs 70 wires." So >> coming out to what? To the wall.
>> Yeah. Coming out of the wall to the radio. So people are like, "If you have an old school radio, you don't need 70 wires to play music." Those 70 wires are probably like bugging this whole place.
>> That is crazy.
>> And there are reports that that radio just like doesn't work ever to play music at least. I'm sure it's working on other things, but yeah.
>> Oh my god.
>> So, uh, it's actually speculated that a floor of every single one of these hotels are reserved for the state to spy on their rooms and surveillance the whole place. So, level five perhaps, but we're going to come back to that.
Anyway, Young Pioneer Tours are one of the top tour companies that tour North Korea. They're based out of China and they specialize in budget tours. So, it's kind of perfect for students or families who aren't willing to spend a lot on fancy resorts and they specifically go to not so typical tour destinations. They actually have 18 tours for the first half of 2024 available in North Korea. Yeah, they also do private tours of North Korea on top of that. It's obviously not geared toward your typical traveler. Like I think it takes a very specific type of person, an adventure if you will, to want to go into North Korea.
Otto had a thing for adventure and he was generally a very curious person, but it's not really what you're picturing.
Like he's not some sort of crazy adrenaline junkie that has to climb up 70 stories in New York City to feel some high and thrill. He just liked to experience things that weren't common to him. Like the Eiffel Tower is not as intriguing as seeing these countries that are less talked about. Overall, he seemed like a really responsible person.
He was an econ student who had dreams of working on Wall Street. He was also one of those people that had trademarks.
Okay, I think it's so cool when someone is known amongst their peers or their buddies for something. And Otto was the guy that loved Hawaiian shirts. He would actually thrift Hawaiian shirts. And like this, I think this shows you what kind of traveler he was. He would go into thrift shops and he said he liked buying secondhand clothes because it's almost like memorabilia.
Something new has no history. These clothes, they have history. They have vibes. They have stains. They have character. And he just loved the colorfulness of Hawaiian shirts. It would just uplift people. And he would always throw them on on a pair of khakis. He had this typical Justin Bieber haircut, which was in at the time. And his obsession was rap music.
Everyone said he was so fun to be around. He was raised in Ohio to middle-class parents, Fred and Cindy.
And I really think that Otto was your very typical all-American boy. And I'm sure he loved it, but he also wanted to see like what else is out there. I mean, surely there's more than this small town that I grew up in. Like the world is so big. I cannot just be going to Target and Kroger or Ralph's every single day of my life. So after being admitted into the University of Virginia with a scholarship, he applied for a study abroad program in Hong Kong. And once he would be done with that, his future plans were to move to New York City, get a job as an investment banker. And he's like, "You know what? This is going to be like my last semester abroad. Then I'm moving to New York. My life is about to be filled with responsibilities, rent, work, pressure, all of this. now is the time to do something different, like one last time before I graduate and I'm like a full-blown adult because when you're an adult, you have so much responsibilities, you can't take these risks. So, he decides he would make a pit stop in North Korea before Hong Kong for his overseas program. His parents are like, "We do not like that idea."
His parents are so against it. They feel anxiety, but they also know how much learning about different cultures means for Otto. He just wanted to travel. He doesn't care about Fiji or Bali. His last international destination for travel had been Cuba. And Cuba is a wonderful country, don't get me wrong.
They're known for great music, great food, great people, but it's not really on a lot of Americans travel list because of tense economic and political relations at play. And I think technically you cannot get a tourism visa into Cuba.
>> So, you have to like um I think it's relatively easy to get a visa though, don't quote me on that, but there's like 12 different reasons and you just have to apply. But it can never be for like straight up just tourism. But Otto was like, I want to go see the world. And he did exercise increased caution wherever he went. And his parents knew that.
They're like, he's a trustworthy kid. He works hard, gets good grades. I mean, he spends most of his time at school or playing soccer. So once in a while when he wants to see different cultures, how can we say no? How can we say no? He's not some party animal, right? Like he's the type of kid that would write down every single due date on his planner. If you asked him to go pick up your dry cleaning, he would write it down on his planner so he wouldn't forget it. He was so so organized and it would only be 5 days. You know what could happen in 5 days.
This was Otto's Christmas present to himself. He put down the deposit for the 5-day Fortnite New Year's party tour to North Korea. And he was a bit nervous.
He was a bit excited. And finally he gets on that plane from Beijing to North Korea. And side note, the plane itself was a big surprise. So I think North Korea only allows certain aircrafts to fly into North Korean air. So uh and the they have to like approve the aircrafts.
I believe they mostly use old Soviet jets from back when the Soviet Union had control over North Korea. I mean these planes are really old.
>> Like really old. I mean still functional, right? But Oh yeah. I think that instantly kind of sets the tone for this tour. It's not gonna be like your cute little Cancun Resort. Okay, this is setting the tone. Otto and the Young Pioneer Tour Group, they land in Pyongyang, North Korea's capital on December 29th, 2015. North Korean police officers immediately confiscated all their phones and electronic devices.
They went through all of that, made sure that they weren't bringing in prohibited content inside. probably Kdramas, certain K-pop music, like all of these banned forms of media. Side note, I don't know if this is selective if they give the phones or cameras back after a while because I went into this deep dive into tourism in North Korea and of course there are YouTubers who went to North Korea and they're just like vlogging as if they're travelies. It's wild and they're posting it.
>> But those seem pretty monitored, right?
>> They see. Okay. Some of them I was shocked at.
>> It's controlled but so naturally done.
>> They will point out stuff that isn't good, but it's such minuscule stuff in the grand scheme of things. They're like, "Oh, this radio doesn't work.
Oh, it's pretty dead in here."
>> I'm not sure if the procedure changes frequently or if it's only for certain journalism or social media approved tourist. I don't know. But either way, the trip starts off normal. Their bags are searched and when they're cleared the tour group, they're on their little merry way. Just like that, every single person on that tour had just left the free world. They check into their hotel.
Otto's roommate for the trip was a 40-something old man from the UK named Danny, and the two of them were the only single men on the trip, so they were de facto roommates. They actually got along really well despite the age difference.
Danny said, "You know, from the second I met him, we just hit it off. He's very bright, very intelligent, likable, very mature for his age.
And the tour is operating smoothly. They follow their itinerary. The first stop was to see huge bronze statues of Kim Jong-il and Kim Jong-un. It's winter December, so the statues are covered in snow. There's piles and piles of fresh flowers all over the statues, all around the statues. They took photos in front of it. Here's a weird rule. If you take a photo with any statue picture or anything about Kim Jong-un, you cannot cut off his head. Like imagine I'm posing next to a statue and the picture is me. I'm the main character of the picture and the statue's head is cut off like this in the picture.
>> Oh, you don't want to know what happens.
>> Really? That's a law.
>> Yeah. If there's a like a newspaper with Kim Jong-un's face, you cannot fold it on his face.
>> Really? So, they were told this or what?
I don't know if this group was told this, but I saw on YouTube videos they were like, "Oh, this is what we were told when we got here."
>> Wow.
>> Yeah.
>> Okay.
>> Very interesting. Okay. So, keep these rules in mind. They had this snowball fight and some of the neighborhood kids joined in. And side note about these neighborhood kids, these tourists were in one of the many, no, not many, one of the very few tourist approved areas in the entire country. There is a strong possibility and speculation, a dangerous speculation on my end, if you will, but there's a possibility that these aren't just random kids. They might have been given the job of making foreigners see that North Korean children are happy and healthy and are engaging in childlike activities like snowball fights with foreigners. But you have to remember that is very odd. I don't remember the last time I went traveling somewhere and I like had a snowball fight and kids just joined it. Well, actually, I was pushed off a slide kind of. you were pushed off a slide in Switzerland. So maybe, but it's just everything about it feels a little >> little interesting. Okay, that's just the speculation. Now, the group's next major stop was one of North Korea's biggest tourist attractions. It's an old US Navy spy ship. The USS Pueblo was captured by North Korea back in 1968, and now North Korea had turned it into an American horror museum of sorts.
Hm.
>> So, side note about this spy ship. The US was just minding their business in international waters when a North Korean ship sneaks up on them, captures the entire crew, and the ship was kept by North Korea and converted into like a like a trophy.
Yeah. So, they're guided through the boat by an English-speaking North Korean who told them how North Korea had captured this ship from the Imperial enemy and how they captured, starved, and beat the crew for 11 months. Many of the crew died, but that's all right because North Korea didn't just kidnap and torture random international soldiers. No, no, no, no, no. They were eliminating the evil and powerful enemies that were dangerous.
Basically, they did their national duty to keep innocent, good Korean citizens safe. And North Korea has some really intense propaganda. From the minute a North Korean is born, they are spoonfed propaganda and hateful messages towards America and South Korea. America is public enemy number one. Americans are typically not good people in the eyes of many North Koreans. Not just the government, but Americans.
There are entire museums dedicated to all the horrible things that American soldiers did and probably didn't do to the Korean citizens back during the war.
>> So, you think they feel some type of way when they have American tourists?
>> Yeah. So, um, typically these tours, from what I could tell online, a lot of them are like even young pioneer tours.
I see a lot of Europeans. I see a lot of Russians, a lot of Chinese tourists. It doesn't seem like a lot of Americans go.
>> Yes.
>> Yeah. Okay.
>> And um, children are taken to this museum every single year for their school field trip since kindergarten.
And a lot of the museum are just graphic, sometimes edited photos of American soldiers brutalizing Korean soldiers or Korean civilians. North Korean civilians, like really graphic depictions of American soldiers tying up Asian women and chopping off their private parts, decapitating them. Like it's a lot. So I can't even blame the anti-American hatred on the North Korean citizens themselves because you know you we think we're all smarter than that, but like if you're born into a country like that, that's what you only know since the day you're born. America is the boogey monster.
I saw this vice piece where they spoke with North Koreans at a labor camp in Russia and they admitted that the st Okay, you look confused. So basically, North Korea had some deals with Russia where they would send in a bunch of civilians that are watched non-stop and they made like their own little North Korea camp in Russia in like the woods of Russia and then they're they're there logging. So they're providing like cheap free labor basically and Russia pays North Korea for it >> really. And these citizens, they get paid nothing.
>> Yeah. So they just bring in North Koreans to Russia. So a bunch of um vice journalists tried to infiltrate that camp in Russia cuz they can't go into North Korea, but they can go into Russia, right? Or at least at the time they could. And um you know, these civilians that were working, they said, "Yeah, our standard of living in North Korea is not great. Our country is struggling, but it's because America is working overtime to sabotage us." So they believe all their hardship is due to America, not because of their leaders. So this is an extreme example of it, but most countries do have some sort of propaganda. Okay? Having a common enemy, aka another country, amongst your people to hate gives people a sense of unity.
It also it's a way for governments to be like, "Look citizens, it's bad here, but is it really that bad? Look over there.
It's worse over there."
So, the ship tour unsurprisingly made Otto very uncomfortable. I believe there was one other American on this tour group. So, they were probably super awkward during the entire segment. I mean, the rest of the tour group, they picked up on it. They tried to make jokes to alleviate some of that tension.
So, they would joke around, "Hey, Imperial enemy number one, pass the salt. Hey, Imperial enemy, do you know where the bathroom is?" So, this would kind of lighten the mood a bit and everyone just tried to shake it off as just, okay, this is just some ridiculous government propaganda, right? Besides, the ship that they took, that's from 50 years ago. Times have changed. Things have changed.
Side note, I don't know how much things have changed, at least in North Korea.
According to other members of the tour, they saw multiple posters that depicted North Korea Boom Bombing the White House. Anyway, the rest of the trip goes by very smoothly. And on December 31st, they only have like two days left of this trip, right? The tour group goes to this fancy bar in Pyongyang. They drink.
They're not getting super drunk. Keep this in mind. I don't think anyone in this tour group is trying to get wasted in North Korea to the point where they can't control what they do or what they say. They're just having a couple of wines, a couple of beers, maybe a cocktail here and there. This is important. They were not that drunk.
After the bar, the group goes together to the Kim Song Square, the main square in the capital city, and there are hundreds of people there waiting for fireworks, for other celebrations to start. And it genuinely feels like a good time, at least to the tour group. I think it's one of those moments where if you don't think too much into it, maybe you're like, "Oh, you know what? Maybe this is a nice place." Cuz they're having street food from vendors. They're having beers there. There's civilians or people nearby, right? But again, they're not getting belligerently drunk. They weren't even considered rowdy or tipsy.
They're just kind of slightly pink in the cheeks and happy. The beer is keeping their bodies warm. They're behaving themselves, keeping their heads on their shoulders. After the fireworks, they go back to the hotel. And on their way back, they're concocting this little plan. They're like, "Okay, we're going to all go back to our rooms, put our things down, change cuz we're a little smelly. And then uh who wants to go bowling tonight?" So half the group are like, "I want to go bowling." And the other half are like, "No, I want to just maybe drink a little more and chill out at the bar." So the other half are like, "Okay, we'll meet at the bar. You guys go bowling." Otto's in the car and he's like, "Me feel like I don't really want to do either. Just so tired. Like my head hurts. The beer is kind of ringing.
I just want to call it a night." So the rest of the tour group, including Danny, his roommate, went out without him.
Danny said that he remembered seeing Otto laying down in the hotel room bed, just laying there. When Danny got back from the bar 2 hours later, Otto was still in the room, knocked out in the same position that he had been when he left. Nothing was strange. Nothing was out of place. Nothing was missing.
Nothing was new in the room. Otto was just passed out. But technically, for those 2 hours, Otto was unaccounted for.
Just about everyone believes that he was in his hotel room during the full 2 hours, knocked out. So the tour group, they don't feel anything is weird. They don't feel like anything is off. They don't suspect a thing. They believed it was a great night and they're going to finish the rest of their small amount of days left on the trip and go back home.
They're ready to go back home. They didn't know that things were changing inside this hotel.
They were still being watched, yes, but with a whole different purpose. Someone from their group wouldn't be getting on that plane, but nobody would know until the very last minute.
>> This is the hotel that's really fancy.
>> Yeah.
Instead, they continued on not knowing the magnitude of what was about to happen.
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The last person to see Otto alive would be Danny, his roommate. The two of them were standing in line at passport control at the North Korean airport and they're about to board a plane back to China. They both had their passports out, their documents out, and they hand them to the men that are flipping through their documents and they're just doing it so slowly.
So, it's kind of weird, but fine. I mean, it's not like the airport is packed or anything. And then everything starts happening so fast. The men flipping through their passports called over other officers and they start rapidly talking in Korean. Two North Korean airport security employees then approaches Otto from behind, taps him on his shoulder, and motions for him to follow them. They didn't even say a word to him. Danny's confused, Otto's confused, but they both kind of just like shrug at each other. Maybe it's like one of those random searches at airports, an extra security check or something. Congratulations, you're the 10th flyer. We're going to give you a full body search.
And even though there's this lingering ominous tension, I'm sure Dany and the others are trying to reason with themselves that everything's going to be fine. It had been fine our entire trip.
Danny even tried to make a joke to cut the tension. He looked at Otto one last time as he's being led away and he joked, "Well, that's the last time we'll ever see you."
Otto half laughed and the officers did not laugh.
He would never see Otto again.
Instead, he joined the rest of the group and explained Otto is taken for some security check. Everyone glanced around, but again, they're like, "Okay, it's probably like a new procedure that they're doing, like one of those random checks."
But the longer they waited, the more restless they're starting to feel.
Takeoff time is getting closer and closer, and it's not like other airports or airlines where you can just miss your flight and get scheduled on the next one while you wait at a Starbucks in the airport.
They're like, "He's got to make this flight, otherwise he's being abandoned in North Korea."
They waited for hours until finally they had 15 minutes left before the plane was scheduled to take off. This was quite literally one of the worst countries in the world for an American to be abandoned and he had to make this flight.
But the 15 minutes passed by and instead of Otto coming down the airplane alleyway, a North Korean official walks in on full uniform. Otto Warbeer is very sick and has been taken to the hospital.
Without even waiting for a response, he turns on his heel and leaves the airplane. He didn't even answer any questions. He didn't give any more details. He was just gone.
So, one of the tour guides from the Young Pioneer tours is like, "Okay, well, I'm going to stay with Otto and figure out what's going on." So, he leaves the plane. He refuses to leave Otto there alone.
>> Wow.
>> The rest of the tour group, they have no choice. The airplane door clicks shut and they're in the air without Otto.
I don't think anyone on that plane knew what was going to happen next. I feel like if they had, maybe they wouldn't even have taken this tour, to be honest.
Maybe they really just thought that Otto was sick. The one tour employee that stayed behind to look for Otto. He wasn't allowed to see Otto. He said that he just stayed around in that hotel for a few days trying to talk to anyone that could get in contact with Otto and tell him what's going on with Otto. What? Can I see him? Can I talk to him for a second? What am I going to tell his family? They didn't give him any answers. They banned him from seeing Otto and he was sent back home.
Another tour guide that landed in Beijing immediately called some of the connections that they had in North Korea. And the answer that they got was, "Oh, Otto had a headache in the middle of the security check." And he asked if we could take him to the hospital.
It wasn't matching up with Danny's story and it didn't make sense. Why would Otto be like, "Oh, yeah. Let me go to the hospital here instead of in Beijing, but what could they do?" Meanwhile, Otto's parents got word that he was left behind in North Korea, and the tour company called to update them, but nobody had any information. And the parents, they're trying to get in contact with anyone that they could. But it's not like you have a friend of a friend who knows someone in North Korea.
Like, how do you even get connected to the right people?
The next person to hear from Otto, or rather about Otto, was a man named Robert King. Robert was expecting this to be another normal Friday at his desk job. He sits down, opens up his email, and there's one marked urgent. He's thinking, "Please let it not be, and he clicks on it." So, Robert King works at the US Department of State as their special envoy for North Korea. He's like the North Korean expert. He's not a diplomat because we don't really have like a embassy in North Korea, you know, but he's like a special envoy.
Basically, his job was to be a pseudo diplomat for any issues that could arise between North Korea and the US, which you know, there's a lot of issues.
>> Where is he?
>> In the US.
>> Oh, >> so the email just reads, "Captive last seen January 2nd, 2016."
Robert got the gist of the situation.
Otto had gone on a tour group. Nothing new. He's a college student from America. North Korea had arrested him for trying to take down the North Korean regime. Overtake the government.
>> Whoa.
>> An American college student.
Robert highly doubted that a random college student would overtake the North Korean regime. But, you know, never say never. But he knew one thing. In North Korea, it doesn't matter if you did or didn't do something. All that matters was they said you did it. If they think you committed a crime, you committed a crime. Robert knew that Otto would have confessed to just about anything. That's what they do. They put you under immense physical duress, torture, mental and emotional man manipulation until you confess and then they sentence you based off that confession.
North Korea is tricky territory because they're not in the habit of sending Americans they deem to be criminals back home to America, their number one enemy.
So for Robert, getting an American out of North Korea is timeconuming, difficult, increasingly impossible with these rising tensions. That's why the US has North Korea or they did have North Korea under the highest possible travel advisory level. Level four. Do not travel. Travel is strongly discouraged.
>> It's no longer >> you literally cannot go anymore.
>> Oh >> yeah. US passport holders are banned from entering North Korea. If you are a dual citizen, you can use your other passport that is not the US passport, but Americans are banned.
>> You cannot even get a visa. Yeah.
>> Interesting.
>> Yeah. So, how did Otto try to overthrow the regime? It all starts on level five of the hotel, the forbidden level. Level five is where the staff of the hotel live. They have their rooms there. The security stuff along with some storage is on level five, or at least that's what they report. They're like, "It's nothing but hotel staff rooms." Many people speculate that level 5 was reserved for hotel staff to surveillance the guests. There are some YouTube videos of level 5 that of the hotel.
Yeah, YouTubers are crazy. Okay, it's insane. One person snuck in there in the middle of the night, recorded it, posted it to YouTube. I mean, was it even worth it? I don't know. From what I can see in the video, level 5 looks like some something out of a horror movie. There's large waxy tiled floors like the ones you would imagine in creepy backroom photos. They've got, you know, that office building ceilings, the ones that are plaster feeling blocks that you can push up.
>> Mhm.
>> The ceiling tiles are white. The plastic part are like this thick dark color. And the only decoration on the entire floor are these giant propaganda posters on the walls. And they say things like, "Work hard to support our great country.
The great leader will reward your hard work." Okay. To us, these posters might not seem like much. Just random posters.
They're not even framed. It doesn't even look like super expensive. They look like print, right? You go, you'd see posters like that in a dental office.
Okay? Not the exact ones, but you get what I'm saying. They're not framed.
They're not pieces of art. They're just posters. But in North Korea, they were the difference between life and death. A few years beforehand, there was a case of a janitor who was mopping the floor of a factory. He accidentally bumped into one of these posters that happened to be framed. It fell off the wall. He dropped his mop trying to catch this poster in time, but it fell. He missed it. Glass shattered everywhere. The poster was scratched. The whole thing was caught on camera. And the poor janitor was arrested for destroying something with the image of the great leader on it. and he was allegedly never seen again.
Apparently, even if someone thinks that you're glaring at a poster, they can report you and you could be sentenced to a hard labor prison.
Side note, like a week ago, a tropical storm was hitting North Korea and Kim Jong-un told his people to protect his portraits and posters at all costs. Aka, he'll probably end you if you don't protect his portraits because I don't know, you were like fighting for your life in the storm.
This is like last week.
North Korea stated that on the very last night of the tour, while half the group went bowling, the other half went to the bar, Otto lied to everyone, saying that he felt a bit sick. He wanted to stay and sleep in his hotel room. There were two hours that were unaccounted for for Otto. North Korea was alleging he snuck into the fifth floor after the group was busy. They said that there is CCTV footage. Let me tell you, this CCTV footage looks like it's been filmed with a Kiwi. I'm exaggerating obviously, but only by a little bit. Like we don't have the entire footage either. We just have a tiny portion of it. It's like what appears to be a hooded figure wearing all black walking up to a poster on level 5, taking it off the wall. It seems like maybe they try to roll it up, maybe they don't. They place it on the ground. That's it. That's all we have in the clip. We don't have Otto coming out of his hotel room, which I'm just saying like you're talking about the surveillance state. They don't have hallway CCTVs on other floors. I doubt it.
We don't have him entering back into his room. We don't have any of that. We just have like this random figure. We don't even see their face. And you're saying this is Otto.
>> Is there time on there or no?
>> Yes, it does happen to be around that time.
>> Okay.
>> So, they claim but again, you know, now in North Korea, this is considered a horrible crime. This is basically disrespecting the great leader, which is disrespecting the entire country. And since the posters are categorized as motivational content, the person is then trying to demotivate the entire population. If you demotivate the entire population, you decrease the country's economic output and then you destroy the country, you overthrow the regime.
Have you guys read the book, If you give a mouse a cookie?
>> No.
>> It's like if you give a mouse a cookie, they're going to ask for a cup of milk to go with it. Then they're going to ask for this. This is like the same logic.
>> It's just a poster and now you're saying he's trying to overthrow the regime.
>> Yeah.
>> What? Side note, we can't even be sure that this is Otto. But North Korea argues this is Otto and the footage was saved and we didn't say anything that night. They let the tour go on as normal, which like what is that? And right at that last moment, he was detained by North Korea. And for almost 3 weeks, it was radio silence. After the initial, oh, he had a headache and asked to be hospitalized. After that, there was nothing for almost 3 weeks. Nobody had a single clue what was going on. And then they released the CCTV footage.
They released the reason for his arrest, saying, "This is why we arrested him. He did this to the poster." Robert, the North Korean expert, said he took one look at that footage and thought, "This is going to be rough." He had seven years of experience negotiating the release of more than a dozen Americans from North Korea, and this was bad. So firstly, Robert had to sit down with Otto's parents and explain to them the process that he was unfortunately way too familiar with. He is saying things like, you know, North Korea is going to make him confess to undermining the regime. Then they're going to use that as domestic propaganda to further convince North Korean citizens that Americans are out there to destroy them.
Then Otto will be sent to jail and they will use his freedom as a bargaining chip in some sort of negotiations with the United States. Probably something to do with weapons. And for 6 weeks, nothing happened. North Korea didn't say, "Hey guys, did you guys see the news? So, um, this is what we want."
They didn't say that. nothing. And Otto's family, they're living with this constant anxiety of wondering, is our son okay? Is he what is he doing? They haven't heard from him personally. Is he even alive? And then on February 29th, 2016, everything changed. North Korea held a press conference for Otto and the conference was televised. Recordings were sent to the United States as well as international major media networks.
And the video starts with officers guiding Otto by his elbows, one on each side of his body into the conference room. His head is hung low with his eyes on the floor. His arms are limp and handcuffed at the wrists and he's walking along with the guards. He looks just so dejected without any energy, but there are no visible bruises or injuries. He's wearing a cream colored suit that he packed for his um luggage for the trip. And when he gets to the podium, he's sitting underneath two huge frames of Kim and Kim Jong- and he takes a huge bow and he confesses again. I can't even imagine the panic, terror, and just disorienting feeling that his parents must have felt watching their son in this video. Like, I'm not a parent, but I always hear the scariest thing for parents is the idea that their baby is in trouble one day and they are powerless to help them. That is like a terrifying, gut-wrenching feeling. And this press conference is a really hard watch. Otto is looking down at the podium the whole time. And it just makes people feel like he's reading a script.
He's very emotional. He's not screaming or wailing, but he's crying. And his grief is so obvious. He just looks so desperate. On the early morning of January 1st, 2016, I committed my crime of taking out the important political slogan from the staffonly area of the Yangto International Hotel aimed at harming the work ethic and the motivation of the Korean people. I understand the severity of my crime and I have no idea what sort of penalty I may face, but I am begging to the Korean people and government for my forgiveness, and I am praying to the heavens so that I may be returned home to my family. I have been very impressed by the Korean government's humanitarian treatment of severe criminals like myself. He said that he attempted to steal a poster from the restricted floor of the hotel. The poster said, "Let's arm ourselves strongly with Kim Jong-'s patriotism." Said he was wearing his quietest boots, best for sneaking. He said he tried to steal it on behalf of the local Methodist church. Side note, North Koreans hate religious people because, you know, it goes against their methodology, I guess, that Kim Jong-un is. And um he said he tried to steal it also for the Z society which is a secret society a secret fraternity at the University of Virginia that is connected to the CIA. He's confessing that he did this under orders of the CIA.
>> Wait, so he's saying he's trying to steal a poster to show it to CIA?
>> Yeah, because the CIA told him to. I mean there are so many things wrong with that.
>> Okay.
>> It's not a top secret. These posters are everywhere. everyone on tour sees these types of posters. It just doesn't make sense. He says, "I deeply thank the North Korean government for the opportunity to apologize for my crime, to beg for forgiveness, and to beg for any assistance to save my life. I have made the single worst decision of my life. But I am only human."
And that was the confession. A couple of things here that don't make sense.
Beyond the fact that most people highly, highly doubt that Otto was recruited by the CIA. Again, never say never. Who knows what the CIA is doing? Who knows how they're recruiting people? But the facts are I don't think the CIA sent Otto on a se spy mission to go steal a poster that had no further insight into North Korea. Everyone had already seen these types of posters all over town.
It's not groundbreaking information.
It's not a sacred object. Surely the CIA wouldn't risk someone's life for a poster like that. It wasn't even stolen.
It was laid on the floor. How would the CIA be undermining North Korea's regime with that?
But beyond that, Otto doesn't even belong to a Methodist church. He's Jewish.
>> Wa.
>> Also, his family said that the words coming out of Otto's mouth during the confession just don't match the way that he normally talks. They said it was obvious that this was a script. I'm not saying that he didn't try and take that poster. There is a possibility that he maybe did try and take that poster.
Maybe he wanted to bring it as like a, hey guys, look what I got or some sort of souvenir or something, right? But that doesn't negate the fact that a young college student is trapped in North Korea and he's being charged with the very serious crime of working as a spy for the United States CIA to harm the North Korean people and overthrow the government.
Otto's parents did everything to get every politician they could to help with their son's case. They got in contact with Ohio governor who put them in contact with New Mexico's governor who had worked with the UN prior. He had strong connections with North Korean representatives. So, they're not official ambassadors because, you know, like I said, the US does not have a North Korean embassy, but they work as representatives and they're basically the unofficial communications channel, but it's not a great communication channel. It's like a giant game of telephone, or at least it was back in 2016, 2017. I think things have gotten better, but um that's not till way later. So, messages from the US would go to the ambassador of Sweden. It's always Sweden. Interesting. not Switzerland because they also have a North Korean embassy, but always Sweden. The country is neutral between the US and North Korea. Then the Swedish ambassadors will pass the message along to their North Korean ambassadors and then those ambassadors pass it on to the North Korean government officials. And then it's just it's a very long, lengthy process. And if just one party in the middle of it decides they have better things to do, that message is not getting sent quickly. Robert and Otto's family, they're just left to twiddle their thumbs. But things are moving fast in North Korea. Otto's trial is underway, if you can even call it a trial. Basically, they gave him a trial where Otto said, "I never should have allowed myself to be lured by the United States administration to commit a crime in this country. I wish that the United States administration would never manipulate people like myself to commit crimes against foreign countries in the future. I entirely beg you, the people and government of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, for your forgiveness. Please, I have made the worst mistake of my life.
>> I entirely beg you, people of government of the DPR Korea, for your forgiveness.
Please, I have made the worst mistake of my life. Please have to save me.
Please think of my family. On March 16th, 2016, Otto was sentenced to 15 years. 15 years in a hard labor prison in North Korea.
15 years of hard labor for allegedly taking a propaganda poster off a wall and putting it on the floor.
National Human Rights Watch said that the sentence was outrageous and shocking. Even for North Korea, this sentence was insane. Foreigners usually get lighter sentences than their own citizens since they belong to other countries that could get angry and do something about it. But it was just out the window with Otto. Robert, the expert in North Korea for the US government said he was just so shocked. He was almost certain North Korea would have reached out for a negotiation or some sort of trade for Otto, but they didn't.
So, Robert believes there is a strong political motive behind why Otto is now going into prison.
Otto's parents rightfully they don't give a fork about politics. This is their son and they want him home. They spent every waking moment trying to reach out to anyone that they could get in contact with. Finally, they're able to get in contact with someone from the Obama administration. This is during his presidency and they were told by the administration that this is a marathon and not a sprint.
The process would take patience, which you know, patience is a very hard thing to come by when your son has been unjustly imprisoned in a labor camp for 15 years in a country that hates Americans. Robert, the government official, got the Obama administration to organize a visit to Pyongyang. He sent a senior official of the US State Department, went to North Korea September of 2016. So, this is what, like >> a year later?
>> Yeah.
>> Wait, September? Yeah. Yeah. Almost a year later. His visit was supposed to last 4 days.
>> So, who went? Robert went or a different >> Robert secondhand man. Um, they thought it would be too aggressive to send in the US's known expert on North Korea.
>> It would be too much of like a statement.
>> Got it.
>> So, they sent in um someone that worked for Robert or under Robert and he was supposed to be there for 4 days. The first 3 days, North Korean representatives and officials refused to talk to him about anything. Instead, they took him all around the touristy spots in North Korea. All the places that Otto had just visited. It's like everyone was treating him as if he was on vacation and not here for business.
Not to talk about the literal lives at stake. The last day he was able to sit down with someone finally, and they refused to talk about Otto. He wasn't even allowed to see Otto. He was disappointed, of course, but everyone went home and was like, "Okay, wait.
Let's think about it. It's September 2016.
Let me paint the scene. Obama is about to leave office. He cannot serve another term as president. And it seems like North Korea had asked of something in return for Otto. Again, we don't know if this is true. We don't know if they did ask for something, and if they did, what it was, but it doesn't look like the Obama administration was playing ball with them. The next presidential election was going to be held in 2 months. Maybe North Korea felt like they could get more for their cards with Trump or Clinton. M >> they're like, "Okay, Obama doesn't want to play, but he's going to be out of office in a few months, so let's just wait and see if we can get anything from the new president."
When Trump won, Robert, we have no idea of his political affiliation. He was happy purely for the fact that he felt like, okay, this is a sign North Korea is going to start negotiating because we've got a new president in office.
Robert keeps trying to reach out to Trump to get his approval for some of the plans to talk to North Korea, but he keeps getting ignored. And Fred, Otto's dad, is not having it. Now again, regardless of your political affiliation, Fred is smart. He's smart.
He thought, "How do I get Donald Trump's attention when the whole world is flipping out over his presidency right now? There's so much chatter online, breaking news every day.
>> How do I How do I not only get his attention, how do I motivate him to want to help us?"
He went on Fox 4 News and he complained that the State Department wasn't doing enough for his son and that his son was a good all-American boy. He was a Republican college student that was pursuing the American dream. He was a soccer player, football player. He was an American through and through. He could have been your son and he was trapped by the enemy territory. Fred also threw Obama under the bus and stated the previous administration made no movements to help his son. Then he addressed Trump directly and stated, "President Trump, I ask you to bring my son home. You can make a difference here. Political affiliation aside, if you think about it, it's genius. He got on Trump's alleged favorite news channel. He talked about how his son was the epitome of the children of most of the people who voted for Trump, the basic Midwest American boy. Then he talked about how Obama had done nothing for his son, for the son of the nation, which would then make Trump feel like if he helped Otto, he would be better than his predecessor. He would get a positive public image. And if he didn't help, then it would look like he didn't care about the nation's children and he was just like Obama.
Fred is playing chess and politicians are playing checkers. Okay, it worked.
Trump personally raised the case to the top of his agenda. And mind you, this is like months into his presidency. It's not even like a year or two.
>> Robert retired soon and the case was transferred over to a new guy, an expert in North Korea, Joseph Yun. And things are looking up. North Korea diplomats were arranged to meet in the US to talk about Otto's potential release. The meeting was set for February 2017. North Korean officials were going to fly into the US. It had been over a year since Otto had been detained. But then something else happened in February.
Something we've talked about. Kim Jong- Nam was murdered. Kim Jong-un's half brother was murdered in broad daylight in a busy airport by two girls who claimed they thought they were pranking a random stranger for a YouTube video.
and they poisoned him. Allegedly, the assassination was orchestrated by his halfb brotherther, Kim Jong-un. The meeting was cancelled because of this.
The family did not lose hope, though. It seemed like at least now things were kind of inching towards a resolution.
Side note, there are as many as 120,000 North Koreans in prison right now.
Probably more, but people can be sent to prison in North Korea for the smallest things. In prison, they survive on starvation rations, endure routine torture, beatings, dangerous forced labor like coal mining, and the very unlucky, they are tortured to death. One prisoner in North Korea who escaped to South Korea said, "North Korean prisons are actually hell." Actually, they would beat us. We were so hungry that we would catch mice in our cell to eat raw.
She said every day in her small prison, at least six to eight of her fellow prisoners died. every single day.
But foreign prisoners get much better treatment. It's most likely that Otto was detained at what they call the quote guest house. At least five other American prisoners of North Korea were held in a two-story building with a green tiled roof. It's called the guest house, and it's pretty luxurious by North Korean standards. There's a bedroom, a bathroom. It's kind of like a hotel, but no matter how nice it is, it's still a prison. Otto is probably interrogated constantly and for long periods at a time. Another American captive, Kenneth Bay, who was also arrested for trying to overthrow the government. He said he was questioned for 15 hours a day. He said he was never physically beat, but 15 hours a day.
>> Yeah.
>> Is he out?
>> He's out. Then another guy, Jeffrey Fowl, a guy from Ohio who was detained 2 years before Otto, said that the North Koreans never physically harmed him.
They just would constantly threaten him.
If you don't start cooperating, things are going to get a lot less pleasant.
Another American prisoner said that she was subjected to the very same thing.
She said there was a lot of emotional manipulation. They would keep bothering you, keep torturing you. They would sit you down and say, "Literally, nobody loves you. You're your country doesn't care about you. Your family has forgotten about you. You're stuck here for the rest of your life, so get used to it." They would sit in a room where there was only three channels available on the TV. They'd literally be sat in front of the TV watching propaganda movies and videos all day long.
So, Robert and Joseph Yun, the new expert that was hired, he's pretty much trying to comfort Otto's family in a sense, saying he's probably never going to get physically harmed. I mean, his mental health is a completely different story, but they usually don't leave any physical scars. They go with mental torture.
Um some of the detainees that were released from North Korea eventually took their own lives back in the US cuz um a lot of them stated the PTSD and although they were never physically harmed just the non-stop interrogations, the brainwashing, the non-stop propaganda, it just made them feel so utterly hopeless.
A lot of them even tried to end things while they were in North Korea. They felt like there was no light at the end of the tunnel.
And then a year and a half into it, news came out. North Korea alerted Joseph Yun, an employee of the State Department, that Otto was in critical condition. They stated Otto had eaten a meal of spinach and pork and contracted a food born illness like bachulism. He was having trouble sleeping because of it. And then being great hostage takers, they gave him sedatives. He had an allergic reaction to the sedatives. And coupled with the illness his body was already fighting off, he fell into a coma. The US now demanded Otto's return on humanitarian grounds.
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So, let's talk about Dr. Michael. Dr. Michael, he's used to fixing horrifying situations. He'd been working as a trauma care doctor for the past 31 years. He's probably thinking, "The last 31 years, I've been dealing with gunshot wounds, vicious dog bites, mysterious vi viruses and illnesses, all sorts of high pressure life-threatening situations."
So, he's like, "Maybe I can do something a little bit more chill." He starts working as a medical director for an elite air ambulance service. It's a service that turns private jets into flying emergency rooms. And they go all over the world. Typically, they are government contractors. They go all over the world rescuing patients and delivering life-saving care in the sky before landing at a major hospital back in the US.
>> Wow.
>> I didn't even know that existed.
>> Wow.
>> So, Michael is dealing with even more in his new position. Like, he would go and rescue hikers from rural mountains. He flew Ebola infected tourists out of Africa back into the US. He worked on planes that were contracted by the Department of Defense to pick up injured or sick government employees across international lines. So he's like, "Okay, now I truly I've seen it all."
But he was wrong. He had never seen this before. He had never seen North Korea.
And he just stepped off his plane into a country that considered the US and most Americans their number one enemy. He was there to rescue Otto Warbeer and bring him back home. Or at least that's the plan. But nothing was going according to the plan. At first, when Michael was told of his next drop, he's like, "Okay team, let's pack it up. We're going to fly to Japan and then from Japan when we get the AOK we're flying into North Korea. So the whole medical team including Joseph Yun, the US expert on North Korea and another political diplomat and probably their teams, they all fly from the US to Japan and they're waiting for the AOK. And North Korea is like sure thing let's give you the AOK but we only want three people. We want a doctor and you can bring the diplomat and Joseph and that's it.
So they are saying it's good they're allowing them to pick up >> auto >> auto now because his health is in critical condition.
>> Mhm.
>> So they fly and it said that they didn't even have like um like digital air travel guidelines or restrictions or anything like that. They just had a paper map and North Korea was like, "Okay, now you're going to go northwest for 20 miles." They're like, "Oh, okay."
They're literally flying from Japan to North Korea with vague instructions.
Thankfully, they make it safely. They land the aircraft and when the aircraft door opens, there are just a bunch of North Korean soldiers waiting for them.
The three of them, Michael, Joseph, so Dr. Michael, Joseph the expert, and the diplomat, they're rushed onto a bus and taken not to a hospital like they imagined, but what was like a plush cabin in the middle of nowhere in North Korea. They met with North Korean diplomats and it just went in circles.
They're like, literally, why did you even bring us here if we can't see Otto?
if we can't bring Otto home. And they would sit down and they'd say, "Okay, Joseph, Yun, Otto Warbeer is an American citizen that broke the law here." And Joseph is like, "Okay, yes, the US will punish him according to the conviction that your country has handed out, but let us take him home for further medical treatment." No, but he committed a crime. Why should he escape his punishment? He's not escaping his punishment. We are going to punish him after we give him medical treatment. But he defiled a motivational poster of our supreme leader with the intention of attempting to overthrow our state. He is working for the CIA. He should be punished. Like I said, he will be punished, but just let us take him home, give him the medical care first, and then we'll punish him. It was like this for hours and hours and hours until finally they agreed to take them to see Otto. They were taken to the hospital, ironically named Friendship Hospital.
From there, Dr. Dr. Michael was allowed to see his charts and check his condition. Otto was kept alone in a private hospital room. He was pale, skinny, unconscious. He had a feeding tube in his nose. Dr. Michael tried to clap once on the right side of his head.
No response. On the left, no response. I mean, this didn't come as a surprise.
Michael knew that Otto was in a coma, but when he asked for the medical charts, they handed him brain scans. A few things about the brain scans. Sure enough, it showed very low activity in both parts of his brain, meaning it was determined that most likely he wasn't in a coma because of a blow to his head or some sort of blunt force trauma to his head. More likely he was in a coma because he suffered from a lack of oxygen for too long. Could be from drugs, could be from poison, could be from strangulation, could be from anything. Just no oxygen to the brain.
We don't know exactly how or what caused that. Could be from a heart attack or breathing problems.
Interesting. But then Dr. Michael's eyes see the date on the scans. March 2016.
It is now July 2017.
That meant Otto had been in a coma for over a year.
>> Oh my god.
>> He entered into a coma just after receiving his prison sentence. So Dr. Michael is handed a sheet of paper to sign that stated that Otto has been well cared for. Obviously Dr. Michael was like, "Yeah, I would have totally lied and signed the papers if it meant getting Otto out of there." But he did notice that Otto was sufficiently taken care of, at least from a superficial standpoint. So Otto had been in a coma for over a year. He had no bed sores.
His nails were trimmed. His hair was neat and brushed. There wasn't a single bed sore on his body, which is really hard. So even in some of the best care hospitals in the US, they have a hard time preventing zero bed sores from their immobile patients. Just the sheer amount of time and effort that level of care requires, it's very difficult. So, Dr. Michael signs the papers and they're going home. A North Korean judge commutes Otto's sentence to time served and Otto is now free. So, this is the moment that they had all been waiting for for over a year now, but it's not the way they imagined. Otto has been in a coma for over a year. Fred and Cindy hadn't spoken to him in over a year and a half. And the last time they saw him was a heartbreaking video of him at his sentencing. It had been living hell for the family, but they were patriots.
Okay. So, they're sitting there and they just learned Otto had been in a coma, not recently, but for the past year. And they thought, "That's okay. With the great US health care system, with some love, patience, and being together with family, Otto's going to be Otto again.
We're going to save Otto."
They were just happy that he was alive.
Fred and Cindy rushed to the Cincinnati airport and they were allowed to wait near um like on the tarmac for the private jet to land. There was a chainlink fence separating the tarmac and the public roads. The community showed up with signs of support for the whole family as well as journalists. So, they're waiting and the plane lands June 13th, 2017. Fred and Cindy went up to the steps of the plane and it was bad.
Otto's long wavy hair had been buzzed off. He had a feeding tube. He was completely unresponsive.
Just seeing their son in that state hit them really hard. Now, this is where things get a little contradictory. The story starts snowballing into kind of a mess. So, there were reports from Otto's parents that Otto had been blinded and he was now deaf after returning. They stated that his arms and legs were at odd angles, as if they were totally deformed. I don't know if this is hinting at medical neglect, like saying that his muscles had atrophied because he had been in a coma for so long, or if it was hinting at the fact that maybe his bones were broken or something had happened to his limbs. They stated that he had a scar on his foot and his bottom teeth looked really strange. Otto's dad stated it looked like someone had taken a pair of pliers and rearranged his bottom teeth.
>> What?
>> When Otto's little sister saw him, she screamed. Her brother was unrecognizable.
So, this kind of contradicts Dr. Michael, the doctor stating that other than the coma, Otto was in good physical condition. Either way, Otto is carried down the airplane steps into an ambulance waiting on the tarmac and he was rushed to the hospital.
Otto's dad made it a point to wear Otto's cream colored suit that he had worn in North Korea during his press conference when he begged for forgiveness. And he did a press conference. He said, "There is no excuse for any civilized nation to have kept his condition a secret." and denied him top-notch medical care for so long. Otto is a fighter. My wife and I firmly believe that he fought to stay alive through the worst that the North Koreans could have put him through in order to return to the family and community that he loves. Even if you believe North Korea for their explanation about the food born illness and a sleeping pill causing the coma, and we don't, but if you did, there is no excuse for any civilized nation to have kept his condition a secret and denied him this care. And then a journalist asked, "If you could speak directly to the North Korean regime and the North Korean people, what would you say to them?" I would say that I'm proud of my son Otto, who has been in a pariah regime for the last 18 months, brutalized and terrorized, and now he's home with his family, and I'm tremendously proud.
So Otto stayed in this coma, and his brain scans were not looking good. The loss of brain tissue was extensive. And that kind of loss would be consistent with leaving the brain without oxygen for anywhere between 4 to 20 minutes, which is kind of scary if you think about 20 minutes isn't even that long really.
Eventually, he got sick and his fever had risen to 104°. It stayed that way for 48 hours and his doctors told his family that yes, his body is alive, but his brain will never come back.
When was this?
>> This was like a week after landing.
>> What?
>> His brain was no longer functional at a level compatible with life. The auto that they knew was gone. So they have two decisions. Keep him on life support or let him rest. June 19th, 2017, Otto died in the hospital at 22 years old. But this is where the case spirals into conspiracy land or even some would say propaganda land. Otto's death is a complete mystery. He was in perfect health when he was arrested. He came back home in a coma. His brain was severely damaged, but the doctor said his skin and body were very well taken care of. But then his family turned around and said that his teeth looked like they had been rearranged with pliers and his arms and legs look distorted. Fred and Cindy were convinced that their son had been physically, mentally tortured by the evil North Korean dictatorship. They said this multiple times during media interviews.
Trump also pushed this narrative. Fred and Cindy went on Fox and Friends and they called the North Koreans terrorists who intentionally injured their son.
They demanded that the US take action against North Korea. Trump retweeted this clip and said, "Great interview.
Yes, Otto is tortured beyond belief by North Korea." Now, again, regardless of your political affiliations, presidents of countries, especially of the United States, cannot just say things like this and not expect [ __ ] to go down. So the US military actually started preparing for possible conflict because of this situation.
The US government enforced banking regulations against North Korea forbidding US banks to do any business with the country. Trump also named North Korea a state sponsor of terrorism.
He went to the South Korean National Assembly and told the president of South Korea, "Our common enemy has tortured Otto Warbeer, eventually leading to that fine young man's death."
So it's a lot. Okay. It's also kind of putting South Korea in a very precarious situation because out of all the detainees um statistically wise, American detainees from North Korea are eventually released, South Korean detainees are almost never released from North Korea. There's a lot these are like fighting words, okay? And I'm not saying a man's life isn't worth action from the US, but I'm just saying it doesn't feel like it was a very calculated, thoughtout move from the US foreign policy-wise. Different political parties were blaming each other. Some media outlets blamed Trump for his nonchalant words that could start a war.
Other media outlets blamed Obama for not getting involved and having Trump clean up the mess. Both parties were using it to their advantage.
Side note, a spokesperson for the Obama administration denied accusations that were put on them by Otto's parents. The accusation was the warm beer stated.
Obama's administration told them to just lay low. Aka, don't go to the press about it. We'll handle it. But Obama's administration was like, "We never said that." Like, they could have easily gone to the press if they wanted to. We would never dissuade them from that. Other media outlets didn't go the political route. They just started blaming tour groups for promoting drinking culture in such a nation. Young Pioneer Tours went radio silent and they stayed out of everything that had to do with Otto.
Some media outlets got bored and they straight up just started blaming Otto for going to North Korea in the first place, saying that North Korea is on US's do not travel list. Some people even brought up white male privilege, saying that Americans are way too confident and feel that they are untouchable in other people's countries.
So, this is a lot of like non-Americans, I guess, in different countries saying like, "We've experienced this with American tourists."
Thankfully, a lot of these comments were widely dismissed as just victim blaming.
I mean, at the end of the day, this is the death of a bright young college student, and everyone's turning it into a blame game. In the end, a lot of things came from this case. Fred and Cindy sued North Korea for the torture and murder of their son. They sued the entire country. Okay, this technically is not allowed like a random citizen. It like I can't just go and sue the country of I don't know, list random country here. But since North Korea was named a state sponsor of terrorism, the lawsuit was possible. They asked for half a billion dollars. North Korea ignored the lawsuit. They stated that, "You know what? You want proof that we didn't murder Otto? Send his body back and we'll perform an autopsy, which like, okay, imagine you're like, sure, I'm sure you'll tell us the truth. Let's do that."
Speaking of autopsy, the Warbeers refused an autopsy, but a postmortem was done. Dr. Samarco from the US was in charge of Otto's postmortem, and she tried to stay quiet for a while, but she said ethically she had to speak up. She went to tell journalists that she didn't believe that Otto was tortured, at least not in the way that the Warbeer parents were describing. She said, "There's no evidence of any healing fractures or healed fractures. For someone who had been bedridden for more than a year, I thought that his body was in excellent condition."
So, she stated, "I mean, the scar on his foot, it couldn't come from anything.
The teeth looked normal." Side note, Otto's dentist came out and said that Otto's teeth didn't look rearranged, but they look pushed back, which can happen from loss of gums, >> right? But it was stated by all the experts that some sort of food born illness would likely not have caused this level of brain damage.
So, North Korea did lie. I mean, I guess you could say allegedly. I'm not saying it. You could say it, right? But, um, Dr. Marco said, "We're never really going to know what happened to Otto unless the people that were there come out and say, "Hey, this is what happened." So, there are no definitive answers of whether or not he was tortured. And you guys know when there's no definitive answers, people come up with their own theories. So, theory number one, Otto was waterboarded and ended up in a coma. Cuz people want to know how did he even end up in a coma, right?
>> Because he's healthy. Waterboarding is, I don't want to say a common torture tactic, but it seems to be done by many different governments, including the US, had a history of water boarding. Um, it's when you tie someone down on a table, place a towel over their face, and pour water into the towel until the towel is soaking wet. You keep pouring and you're basically drowning the person without them being underwater.
So, the point is not to kill them. It's to make them feel drowned, but not really drown them to the point of death.
It's straight up torture. Um, ex-N North Korean prisoners said that the forms of torture that guards used was actually so horrible that waterboarding was pretty tame to them. If he was, they might have waterboarded him because they're like, "Oh, this is a foreigner. We can't do our usual routes of torture. If he was waterboarded, he could have gone long enough without oxygen and that could have caused the loss of brain tissue."
If this was the cause, there might have been liquids present at in his lungs at the time of his death, but that's not something we can find out without an autopsy. Supporters of this theory believe that water boarding doesn't leave physical scars. I mean, usually not. So, this is a viable torture tactic for North Korea. Some people argue this theory and say, "No, North Korea almost never physically harms Americans, just mentally and emotionally tortures them.
So, there's no chance he was waterboarded." They believe that this is just some sort of rumor. Then we head into the next theory that Otto tried to hurt himself, but he was found before he was successful.
So after the sentencing, he felt hopeless and he did something to deprive himself of oxygen for that long, but the guards found him and they took him to a hospital. This theory is bolstered by the fact that other American prisoners have tried to end their lives while in captivity by the North Koreans.
Then we get into a wilder theory. North Korea used VX on auto. This is the same deadly chemical that was used on Kim Jong- Nam, Kim Jong-un's half brother.
Some people even take this conspiracy even further and state that maybe they used it on auto to prep and study how it would work on King Jong Nam a year before. Allegedly, they want to test it first and study the effects on how someone would react to it and how much of a dose would be needed. But some people argue they could have just used it on North Korean prisoners. They're not really a government above hurting their own people and that way it wouldn't have been such a diplomatic shitow. But people argue that it could have been two birds, one stone. They want to send a strong message to the US and experiment and see if the US can find the cause of the death, like how undetectable this poison is.
Others argue that potentially the North Korean people, they don't fit the profile that was needed that was consistent with Kim Jong- Nam. Maybe North Korean prisoners had been malnourished for most of their lives, potentially not in the best health, and it wouldn't be comparable to Kim Jong- Nam, who probably received all the food and healthcare his heart desired. Maybe Otto's health profile would have been more similar, but I don't know if that makes sense either because Otto was a young fit college student and Kim Jong- Nam was neither. Like they weren't in the same weight class or the same age group.
An ex spy that was active in North Korea during the time said Otto pretty sure he's pretty sure that Otto was poisoned.
He said, "I can't say 100% sure, but around 70 to 80% sure that drugging led to his death. They couldn't bust his head in. You know, how would that look?"
So they just took care of things by poisoning him. So his belief was that Otto was waterboarded because he wasn't confessing. He was putting up a fight.
He wasn't he wasn't giving up to the regime. And he couldn't speak Korean. This spy said there were so many times they would take American detaininees and get so frustrated that they don't speak Korean and just like mentally or physically torture them cuz they're not answering in Korean.
Now he did he did say water boarding is not proper torture. In North Korea, um, proper torture is typically when you're suspended from hooks on the ceiling and beaten by multiple guards. Then you're electrocuted. And the most popular one is they mix chili powder, a very spicy powder, and water and then they feed that through your nostrils over and over and over again.
Yeah, he did say it was very strange cuz he was in the he was a spy in North Korea at the time that Otto was taken.
And he said everyone in the regime was talking about how this crazy American CIA spy was trying to overthrow the government, but in the same breath, the same people would turn around and say, "H, that college kid is such a stupid kid. He's like a little chicken. He's a coward."
So, do they even believe he's a super secret spy for the CIA?
And I'm not saying Otto is a coward. I'm just saying like, do you guys even believe what you're saying half the time then?
Anyway, he alleged that Otto was drugged after his torture, not to kill him, but to put him in a state where he could never talk about what he endured by the regime. Then he was released back to America.
The journalist asked the expert, "What kind of drugs do you think Otto is given?" And he stated, "I can't be too sure the exact one, but North Korea always talk amongst themselves about how if they detonated their stockpile of biological weapons, the whole world would be done with." And then of course there are the really crazy allegations that Otto was a CIA spy. And some even go so far down the conspiracy rabbit hole that they believe that Otto was returned to the US, but he wasn't comeomaosse and he was only pretending to be. And the news reported on his death, but he didn't really die because he is under CIA protection right now.
Can I just say that is such a wild thought process. Others stated that church members and frat members were offering him up to $20,000 if he brought home a poster from North Korea, which doesn't make sense because you can actually buy a few propaganda posters while you're in North Korea. A lot of former tourists said, I mean, it's not the same ones that they have in North Korea, but it's like propaganda posters.
I think they're smaller, less prominent, probably a very specific style, but like why would you It doesn't make sense. Why would anyone drop $20,000? Why would a church drop $20,000 for that?
Just like how the CIA's theory doesn't make sense, why would they want it so badly? A Redditor commented on a post about Otto, and it is so unhinged and the fact that there were some likes on there and people believe this theory. It reads, "Anyone thought that he might still be alive? The theory that he was a US spy and that all of this was staged.
The parents don't even look like him."
>> What? And one of the key facial manipulation techniques is to shave eyebrows. And we can see that Otto shaved his eyebrows. No reason to shave your eyebrows. Only reason is if you want to look different. Anyway, he looks way older than a college student. I could easily give him 30, not 20 years old. Everything I've seen looks awkward.
Even the photo of him playing with snowballs looks like a plan to make everything seems super nonsense. So, I think he's secretly living under protective ID. Nothing that a beard and hair dye can't fix. He was swapped as he was spotted as a spy. No reason why Koreans want to kill him. No valuable information collected. And also, if he really was killed, I just don't think things would have ended as smoothly as this.
I have nothing to add to that. A funeral was held for Otto at his old high school, and hundreds of people showed up on the streets to watch his funeral car drive by. There were more than 2,500 people to see him off.
Now, briefly, let's talk politics. So, Donald Trump worked very closely with the Warbeer family to help negotiate Otto's release. Even with Otto's passing, Donald Trump put out a statement that was in line with the Warbeer sentiment that Otto is innocent.
The North Korean regime is brutal.
They're killing people. This is just another victim of North Korea. Side note, even South Korean president spoke out against Otto's death. And even the current first lady met with Otto's mother. North Korea did not stay silent.
They said about Trump, "The fact that the old lunatic Trump and his riffraff slandered the sacred dignity of our supreme leadership using bogus data full of falsehood falsehoods and fabrications only serves to redouble the surging hatred of our army and people towards the US and their will to retaliate against us thousandfold."
They stated they were the biggest victim in all of this.
They said, "Although we have no reason to show mercy to such a criminal of the enemy state, we provided him with medical treatments and care with all sincerity and humanitarian basis until his return to the US."
You know what they did? North Korea sent the United States sent Washington a $2 million bill. They said, "This is our charge for the medical care we gave to Otto."
>> Um, the US ignored it. Okay. Just like North Korea ignored the lawsuit. Side note about the lawsuit, America still went ahead with the lawsuit. There was zero cooperation from North Korea and the judge found North Korea guilty and awarded Otto's family $240,000.
And you're like, "No way they're paying.
No way North Korea is like, "Oh, just give me your bank details, right?" The American government gave the Warbeers money from offshore accounts that were seized from North Korea.
>> Yeah. So, technically the money is from North Korea, but it was in the possession of the American government, and that's how the Warbeers were able to get the money. Then in 2018, the Winter Olympic Games happened and Mike Pence, then vice president, invited Fred Warbeer, Otto's dad, to join him. And he was sitting next to him in the VIP box during the opening ceremony. Less than 10 ft away was Kim Jong-un's sister, potentially the shadowy figure that runs everything over there, speculated.
Yeah, >> his 10 ft >> like 10 ft away. Yeah.
>> What?
>> People actually say that Kim Jong-un's sister is scarier than Kim Jong-un. She was within three steps of the father that her regime allegedly murdered and Fred refused to look at her the entire time that he was there. Yeah. So then the Olympic Games happen, right? And Fred Warbeer is there with the vice president and then not too long after Trump goes to North Korea and he's photographed shaking hands.
>> Yeah, I remember that.
>> Yeah. And the two of them signed this huge document that said the US pinky swears not to invade North Korea if North Korea pinky swears to give up their nukes. But nothing really made it binding. It's like when you decide, you know, and from that point on, Trump had nothing but nice things to say about Kim Jong-un. Some say this is a political move and that it was smart that he had to weigh in the American people over Otto Warbeer's family. Other people said, "How do you how do you do that after like how do you just like do that, you know? I mean, that's kind of crazy.
It's like spineless, right?" So regardless of what you think, Otto's parents, they were very offended because Trump even said this about Otto's death.
He said Kim Jong-un didn't know about Otto's death because after all the like narrative against North Korea that was happening, he's suddenly shaking hands with Kim Jong-un. So a lot of reporters were like, "Okay, didn't you just say they murdered an American college student?" And he said, "No, no, no. The dictator didn't know." He said, "I don't believe Kim Jong-un would have allowed that to happen. He tells me he didn't know about it." and I take him at his word. I have spoken to Kim about the death of Otto Warbeer and he tells me he feels very badly about it. It would not have been in Kim's best interest to allow Otto to be treated so poorly.
Otto's parents were mad. Much of the American public were mad. And it didn't matter, though. I mean, the White House was just no longer focused on North Korea's human rights violations. And not too long after that, as some sort of, I guess, spectacle, in May of 2018, North Korea released three other American detainees. And Trump stated, "We want to thank Kim Jong-un who was really excellent to these three incredible people." And like again, political affiliation aside, I think there just are people with power and everyone in between are just collateral. Like regular civilians are just a way to push a narrative or not when it becomes convenient. And I think that's why Otto's parents were so upset by this.
So since September 2017, the US has banned anyone from with a US passport from entering North Korea.
So right now, the closest an American can get to North Korea would be the South Korean side of the DMZ line, the demilitarized zone, which is where Travis King, an American soldier, passed through the border into North Korea like a month ago.
We don't know what's happening to him or what North Korea plans to do with him.
Otto's dad spoke out on Travis's case and said, "We empathize with him and his family. No matter what the circumstances, North Korea is going to manipulate this situation. He is now a hostage, a political prisoner, and a pawn for the regime."
So, like I said,
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