North Korea says it is the 'biggest victim' in death of Otto Warmbier
American student, 22, died shortly after he was returned in a coma to the U.S.
North Korea on Friday denied it cruelly treated or tortured an American student who was detained for more than a year and died in the United States days after being released in a coma.
Pyongyang's official Korean Central News Agency denied that North Korea cruelly treated or tortured Otto Warmbier, and accused the United States and South Korea of a smear campaign that insulted what it called its "humanitarian" treatment of him.
The comments published by the agency were North Korea's first reaction to Warmbier's death in a U.S. hospital Monday after it released him for what it called humanitarian reasons.
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Doctors at the hospital said Warmbier had suffered a severe neurological injury from an unknown cause. Relatives say they were told the 22-year-old University of Virginia student had been in a coma since shortly after he was sentenced to 15 years of hard labour in North Korea in March 2016.
His family and others have blamed North Korea for his condition.
Warmbier was accused of stealing a propaganda poster. Through statements on KCNA, North Korea said it dealt with him according to its domestic laws and international standards.
Torture allegations 'groundless'
"Although we had no reason at all to show mercy to such a criminal of the enemy state, we provided him with medical treatments and care with all sincerity on humanitarian basis until his return to the U.S. ... considering that his health got worse," the agency quoted an unnamed spokesman of Pyongyang's Foreign Ministry as saying.
The spokesman also said "groundless" speculation of torture and beatings could be refuted by American doctors who came to the North to examine Warmbier before his release and allegedly acknowledged that North Korean doctors had "brought him back alive" after his heart nearly stopped.
While Pyongyang accepted U.S. demands for Warmbier's return on humanitarian grounds, Washington "totally distorted this truth and dared to clamour about 'retaliation' and 'pressure' on 'dignified'" North Korea, the spokesman told KCNA.
'Smear campaign'
"To make it clear, we are the biggest victim of this incident and there would be no more foolish judgment than to think we do not know how to calculate gains and losses," the spokesman said.
"The smear campaign against DPRK staged in the U.S. compels us to make firm determination that humanitarianism and benevolence for the enemy are a taboo and we should further sharpen the blade of law," the spokesman added, referring to North Korea by its formal name, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.
The spokesman said it was a "mystery" as to why Warmbier died days after he was returned home, but compared his death to the case of another American detainee, Evan Hunziker. Hunziker was detained in North Korea for months in 1996 for illegally crossing the border and committed suicide less than a month after he returned to the United States later that year.
The spokesman didn't describe how Hunziker died, but claimed that the United States "totally ignored" his death.
The three American citizens known to be in custody in North Korea are:
- Kim Dong Chul, a businessman.
- Tony Kim, a university professor.
- Kim Hak-song, a university employee.
Hyeon Soo Lim, a pastor who lived in the Toronto area for three decades after emigrating from South Korea, has been detained in North Korea since 2015. Before his detention, he had made dozens of trips to North Korea for humanitarian aid purposes, according to his church and family.