It's worth noting his roommate on the North Korean trip, an Englishman in his forties,
does not believe Warmbier stole anything.
“When we got to Pyongyang, we were the two single guys, so it seemed logical for us to be put in the same room,” Gratton said. “So basically from the time we got to Pyongyang to the time I left him, we were together.”
Warmbier stood out in the group because he was so young, Gratton said. The two bonded that first night over a couple of beers.
“I got to know Otto really, really well,” he said. “He was such a mature lad for his age.”
[...]
Gratton said that in the four days they spent together, Warmbier never said anything about a banner and that he saw zero evidence that Warmbier was planning any such act — quite the opposite. The first Gratton heard of the alleged attempted theft was when it was mentioned in news reports weeks later. Gratton and Warmbier weren’t together 24 hours each day, but they traveled together during the day and hung out each night.
“I’ve got nothing from my experiences with him that would suggest he would do something like that,” he said. “At no stage did I ever think he was anything but a very, very polite kid.”
So:
1. American
2. Single, on a group tour but otherwise traveling alone with no family/spouse, friends, coworkers, etc.
3. Youngest guy in the group
4. Mild-mannered, polite, and compliant
When you're surrounded by a pack of wolves like NK, that's a lot of targets painted on yourself. (The only way it could have been worse was "5. Female").
Another interesting tidbit from Gratton that makes me frown:
Gratton has stayed in contact intermittently with Warmbier’s parents over the past year-and-a-half. He said he was “stunned” nobody from the U.S. government or the tour group ever tried to contact him to ask him if he had any information about what happened.
Baffling, if true. I'm no private eye, but come on, when I think of the
first people I'd hit up for answers on what happened...
Anyway: he was very unwise to agree to this trip, but prolonged torture, the loss of his own identity through brain damage, and ultimately being flown back to the U.S. just to die on a hospital bed in front of his parents - yeah, when I think of people whose lives
should meet ends that horrible, I don't think of globetrotting kids who succumb to their dumb urges to see dangerous places. Warmbier put his family through hell and put his government in a terrible position by doing this, but he didn't run over pedestrians, shoot up a nightclub, or molest children. What happened to him isn't
unpredictable, but it is undeserved.
It's a shame that circumstances likely won't permit any real justice for his death. Given the current geopolitical climate, I don't know what action a crime like this really allows for. His family may have to be content just to have him home to bury. And that's cold comfort, but at least he died (or his
body died) surrounded by his family on American soil, not alone in some desolate shithole prison a world away from home.
