Warmbier's death sheds light on N. Korea brutality

By Kim Hyo-jin

With little clue of exactly what happened in the current case of Otto Warmbier, his death is shedding light on the brutality of North Korea’s penal system.

Warmbier was sentenced to 15 years of hard labor for trying to steal a political poster and only set free after his health seriously deteriorated. His parents blamed “torturous mistreatment” by the North Korea for their son falling into a coma.

U.S. citizens who have been kept in custody in North Korea have testified their experience was extremely painful with hard labor and stress from isolation.

Kenneth Bae, a missionary who was also sentenced to 15 year hard labor and later released after two years of captivity, said he had to work for 10 hours daily, six days a week during imprisonment.

In his memoir, titled “Not Forgotten: The True Story of My Imprisonment in North Korea,” Bae wrote he was interrogated from 8 a.m. until 10 p.m. or 11 p.m. every day for the first four weeks. Interrogators demanded he write hundreds of pages of confessions.

Later, he toiled on a farm in a labor camp. From 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. for six days a week, he performed hard labor, carrying rocks and shoveling coal. He lost 27 kilograms during his imprisonment.

What he faced was not just the physical burden. Bae recalled one interrogator kept saying, “No-one remembers you. You have been forgotten by people, your government. You’re not going home anytime soon. You’ll be here for 15 years. You'll be 60 before you go home.”

“I felt like an insect, tangled in a spider web. Every time I moved it got messier, with no way out,” the onetime detainee wrote with layers of helplessness in his tone.

Laura Ling, an American journalist detained in 2009, also testified about the harsh conditions of her captivity, which was compounded by a feeling of isolation.

“It was a 5-by-6-foot cell, and there were a couple of slats on the doors,” she said in a magazine interview after her release. “There were no bars, so you couldn’t see out, and if they closed those slats, it just went completely dark. There was no way to communicate with the outside world.”

While Bae declined to comment on his experience of torture or being beaten, Robert Park, another Christian missionary who was caught in 2009, claimed he was subjected to torture.

He said several North Korean women beat his genitals with a club during an earlier interview with Yonhap. He was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder and attempted suicide after his return.

The cause of Warmbier’s death has not been figured out. The Ohio Coroner’s office said it cannot be determined after an external examination. His parents asked not to conduct an autopsy.

North Korea claimed that Warmbier fell into a coma after contracting botulism and taking a sleeping pill.

Meanwhile, The New York Times quoted a senior U.S. official as saying Washington received intelligence reports that Warmbier had been repeatedly beaten in custody.