PYONGYANG, North Korea — North Korea’s highest court sentenced an American tourist to 15 years in prison with hard labor for subversion on Wednesday, weeks after authorities presented him to media and he tearfully confessed that he had tried to steal a propaganda banner.
PYONGYANG, North Korea — North Korea’s highest court sentenced an American tourist to 15 years in prison with hard labor for subversion on Wednesday, weeks after authorities presented him to media and he tearfully confessed that he had tried to steal a propaganda banner.
Otto Warmbier, 21, a University of Virginia undergraduate, was convicted and sentenced in a one-hour trial in North Korea’s Supreme Court.
He was charged with subversion under Article 60 of North Korea’s criminal code. The court held that he had committed a crime “pursuant to the U.S. government’s hostile policy toward (the North), in a bid to impair the unity of its people after entering it as a tourist.”
North Korea regularly accuses Washington and Seoul of sending spies to overthrow its government to enable the U.S.-backed South Korean government to take control of the Korean Peninsula.
Tensions are particularly high following North Korea’s recent nuclear test and rocket launch, and massive joint military exercises now underway between the U.S. and South Korea that the North sees as a dress rehearsal for invasion.
U.S. State Department spokesman Mark Toner said the sentence was “unduly harsh” and urged North Korea to pardon Warmbier and release him on humanitarian grounds.
“Despite official claims that U.S. citizens arrested in the DPRK are not used for political purposes, it’s increasingly clear from its very public treatment of these cases that the DPRK does exactly that,” Toner told reporters, referring to the North by its official name, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.
The University of Virginia said it was aware of news reports about Warmbier and remained in touch with his family, but would have no additional comment at this time.
A message seeking comment from Warmbier’s family was left at a Wyoming, Ohio, telephone listing for his father, Fred Warmbier. Susanna Max, a spokeswoman for Wyoming City Schools, said last month that the district, where Otto Warmbier attended school, had been in touch with the family. She said Wednesday that the district continues “to respect their privacy” and declines to comment.
Before the trial, Warmbier had said he tried to steal a propaganda banner as a trophy for an acquaintance who wanted to hang it in her church. That would be grounds in North Korea for a subversion charge. He identified the church as Friendship United Methodist Church. Meshach Kanyion, pastor of the church in Wyoming, declined to comment Wednesday.
Ohio Gov. and Republican presidential hopeful John Kasich issued a statement Wednesday calling on North Korea to immediately release Warmbier and let him return to his family. “His detention was completely unjustified and the sentence North Korea imposed on him is an affront to concepts of justice,” Kasich said.
Bill Richardson, a former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, said he had met with North Korean diplomats in New York on Tuesday to request Warmbier’s release after the student’s parents and Kasich asked him to intervene. Richardson said he was neither encouraged nor discouraged by the breakfast meeting with the diplomats from the North Korean mission to the U.N. They said they would relay his request to Pyongyang.