North Korea says it’s ‘biggest victim’ in U.S. student’s death

North Korea on Friday called itself the “biggest victim” in the death of an American student who was detained for more than a year and died days after being released in a coma.

The North’s official Korean Central News Agency denied that North Korea cruelly treated or tortured Otto Warmbier and accused the United States and South Korea of a smear campaign that insulted what it called its “humanitarian” treatment of him.

The comments published by KCNA were North Korea’s first reaction to Otto Warmbier’s death in a U.S. hospital Monday after it released him for what it called humanitarian reasons.

Doctors at the hospital said Warmbier had suffered a severe neurological injury from an unknown cause. Relatives say they were told the 22-yearold University of Virginia student had been in a coma since shortly after he was sentenced to 15 years of hard labour in North Korea in March 2016. His family and others have blamed North Korea for his condition.

Warmbier was accused of stealing a propaganda poster. Through statements on KCNA, North Korea said it dealt with him according to its domestic laws and international standards. “Although we had no reason at all to show mercy to such a criminal of the enemy state, we provided him with medical treatments and care with all sincerity on humanitarian basis until his return to the U.S., considering that his health got worse,” the agency quoted an unidentified Foreign Ministry spokesman as saying.

The spokesman said “groundless” speculation of torture and beatings could be refuted by American doctors who came to North Korea at the time of Warmbier’s repatriation and “recognized that his health indicators like pulse, temperature, respiration and the examination result of the heart and lung were all normal.” The report did not mention Warmbier’s neurological status.

“The fact that Warmbier died suddenly in less than a week just after his return to the U.S. in his normal state of health indicators is a mystery to us as well,” the spokesman said.

“To make it clear, we are the biggest victim of this incident and there would be no more foolish judgment than to think we do not know how to calculate gains and losses,” he said.