US University Student Arrested In North Korea

The school is meeting with the Warmbier family this morning to form an “action plan” and will release a statement later Friday, she said.

The Korean Central News Agency reports that North Korea has detained a USA college student who was traveling in the country over the New Year.

The Korean-language KCNA report said the detainee was a Virginia university student and had entered the country with an “aim to destroy the country’s unity”.

Hall said the United States has little leverage with North Korea.

The agency said the student entered North Korea as a tourist and the matter was under investigation by local authorities.

Warmbier graduated from Wyoming High School, in suburban Cincinnati, as salutatorian in 2013, said Susanna Max, spokesperson for Wyoming City Schools, the Cincinnati Enquirer reported. University spokesman Anthony de Bruyn would say only that the school “has been in touch with Otto Warmbier’s family and will have no additional comment at this time”.

Warmbier is a third-year student at the University of Virginia.

Kieren Thomas, a friend of Warmbier’s younger brother, said the detained student was a star soccer player in high school, outgoing and loved to travel to out of the way places.

Officials in North Korea and the US released little information Friday about a university student from OH who was detained for what the authoritarian nation called a “hostile act”. “You can’t say to your guides, ‘hey did you know that during the war the North bombed the South and not the other way around?'” she said.

When Warmbier’s group reached the airport, he appeared to have been purposefully delayed at immigration, Troy Collings, director of Young Pioneer Tours, told Reuters.

It is claimed Mr Warmbier has links to the United States government and that the alleged act was “tolerated and manipulated” by the US.

The Swedish Embassy represents USA interests in North Korea, and both the U.S. and Canada warns its citizens to avoid visiting the communist country.

And because Warmbier is far from the first American to be detained in the world’s most isolated state, Washington has plenty of experience negotiating for the release of prisoners.

North Korea also regularly accuses Washington and Seoul of sending “spies” to overthrow its government to enable the U.S.-backed South Korean government to control the entire Korean Peninsula.

In 2015, a Canadian pastor born in South Korea was arrested and sentenced to life in prison after the North found him guilty of subversion. Jeffrey Fowle of the Dayton area was held almost six months. He was quickly detained by North Korean officials and accused of being a spy.

According to former New Mexico congressman Bill Richardson (D), who negotiated the release of a North Korean hostage in 1996, Warmbier’s release will likely follow the pattern of previous hostage releases. He was sent home on a USA government jet that landed at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in October 2014 where he reunited with his wife and family.