PYONGYANG, North Korea (AP) – North Korea presented a detained American student before the media on Monday in Pyongyang, where he tearfully apologized for attempting to steal a political banner – at the behest, he said, of a member of a church back home who wanted it as a “trophy” – from a staff-only section of the hotel where he had been staying.
North Korea announced in late January it had arrested Otto Warmbier, a 21-year-old University of Virginia undergraduate student. It said that after entering the country as a tourist he committed an anti-state crime with “the tacit connivance of the U.S. government and under its manipulation.”
No details of what kind of charges or punishment Warmbier faces were immediately released.
According to Warmbier’s statement Monday, he wanted the banner with a political slogan on it as a trophy for the church member, who was the mother of a friend.
In previous cases, people who have been detained in North Korea and given a public confession often recant those admissions after their release.