North Korea reportedly billed the U.S. $2 million for the hospital care of American college student Otto Warmbier and insisted a U.S. official sign a pledge to pay the fee before he was released in 2017.
The American envoy that was sent to bring Warmbier back to the U.S. signed off on an agreement to pay the medical bill in accordance with instructions from President Trump, the Washington Post reported Thursday. That bill reportedly went to the Treasury Department where it remained unpaid through 2017, although it is unclear if the bill was discussed or paid in the runup to President Trump’s two summits with Kim Jong Un.
Warmbier was 21 when he was arrested in North Korea in 2016 for allegedly trying to pull down a propaganda sign in a Pyongyang hotel. Following a forced confession, he was sentenced to 15 years in prison with hard labor and fell into a coma after suffering a traumatic brain injury after allegedly being tortured by his captors.
[Related: Trump claim that Kim Jong Un ‘didn’t know’ about Otto Warmbier at odds with court testimony]
When Warmbier became comatose, the North Koreans held onto the University of Virginia student for 15 months, not alerting U.S. officials that Warmbier had fallen into a coma and was unresponsive. He was returned to the U.S. in June 2017 but died that same month at the University of Cincinnati Medical Center.
The Washington Examiner reached out to the White House for comment, and received statement attributed to White House press secretary Sarah Sanders saying that the Trump administration does not “comment on hostage negotiations, which is why they have been so successful during this administration.”
