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| American student Otto Warmbier speaks as Warmbier is presented to reporters Monday, Feb. 29, 2016, in Pyongyang, North Korea. North Korea announced late last month that it had arrested the 21-year-old University of Virginia undergraduate student. |
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 made a public confession often recant
those statements after their release.
He was
arrested while visiting the country with Young Pioneer Tours, an agency
specializing in travel to North Korea, which is strongly discouraged by
the U.S. State Department. He had been staying at the Yanggakdo
International Hotel, which is located on an island in a river that runs
through Pyongyang, the capital.
It is common for sections of tourist hotels to be reserved for North Korean staff and off-limits to foreigners.
In
Washington, State Department spokesman John Kirby said that as a
general practice, it was not uncommon for North Korea to detain and
imprison people on false or "trumped-up" charges, and use detentions for
propaganda purposes.
But Kirby said he could
not comment on Warmbier's case because of privacy considerations, nor on
whether Sweden, which handles consular affairs for the U.S. in North
Korea, has had access to him.
In his comments,
Warmbier said he was offered a used car worth $10,000 by a member of
the church. He said the church member told him the slogan would be hung
on its wall as a trophy. He also said he was told that if he was
detained and didn't return, $200,000 would be paid to his mother in the
form of a charitable donation.
Warmbier identified the church as the Friendship United Methodist Church, which is in his hometown, Wyoming, Ohio.
Meshach Kanyion, pastor of the church, would not confirm whether he knows Warmbier or if he is a church member.
"I don't have any comment at this time," he told The Associated Press.
Warmbier's
parents said they had not heard from their son since his arrest and
were greatly relieved to finally see a picture of him.
"You
can imagine how deeply worried we were and what a traumatic experience
this has been for us," Warmbier's father, Fred Warmbier, said in a
statement provided by the University of Virginia.
"I
hope the fact that he has conveyed his sincere apology for anything
that he may have done wrong will now make it possible for the (North
Korean) authorities to allow him to return home," he said.
The university said it had no immediate comment other than that it was in close contact with Warmbier's family.
Warmbier
told reporters in Pyongyang that he had also been encouraged in his act
by the university's "Z Society," which he said he was trying to join.
The magazine of the university's alumni association describes the Z
Society as a "semi-secret ring society" that was founded in 1892 and
conducts philanthropy, puts on honorary dinners and grants academic
awards.
Warmbier said he accepted the offer of money because his family is "suffering from very severe financial difficulties."
"I
started to consider this as my only golden opportunity to earn money,"
he said, adding that if he ever mentioned the involvement of the church,
"no payments would come."
North Korea
regularly accuses Washington and Seoul of sending spies to overthrow its
government to enable the U.S.-backed South Korean government to control
the Korean Peninsula.
U.S. tourism to North Korea is legal and virtually all Americans who make the journey return home without incident.
Even
so, the State Department has repeatedly warned against travel to the
North. Visitors, especially those from America, who break the country's
sometimes murky rules risk detention, arrest and possible jail
sentences.
Young Pioneer describes itself on
its website as providing "budget tours to destinations your mother would
rather you stayed away from."
The agency, based in China, also has tours to Iran, Cuba, Turkmenistan, Iraq and other former Soviet countries.
After
Warmbier's detention, it stressed in a news release that he was the
first of the 7,000 people it has taken to North Korea over the past
eight years to face arrest.
"Despite what you may hear, North Korea is probably one of the safest places on Earth to visit," it says on its website.
In
the past, North Korea has held out until senior U.S. officials or
statesmen came to personally bail out detainees, all the way up to
former President Bill Clinton, whose visit in 2009 secured the freedom
of American journalists Euna Lee and Laura Ling. Both had crossed North
Korea's border from China illegally.
It took a
visit in November 2014 by U.S. spy chief James Clapper to bring home
Matthew Miller, who had ripped up his visa when entering the country,
and Korean-American missionary Kenneth Bae, who had been incarcerated
since November 2012.
Jeffrey Fowle, another
U.S. tourist from Ohio detained for six months at about the same time as
Miller, was released just before that and sent home on a U.S.
government plane.
He left a Bible in a local club hoping a North Korean would find it, which is considered a criminal offense in North Korea.
