A brutal North Korean Crime that must not be forgotten

Let’s not mince words: Otto Warmbier was an American kid who made one foolish mistake, one that should not have cost him his life. The North Korean regime arrested him on unjust grounds, possibly as a bargaining chip in negotiations, and ultimately tortured him to death.

Josh Rogin of the Washington Post tracked down Warmbier’s roommate in North Korea, and offers a new, even more chilling account of events: When Danny Gratton met Otto Warmbier in Beijing in late December 2015, they were on their first day of a tour to North Korea that only one of them would successfully complete.

On the tour’s last day, Gratton was the only Westerner to see Warmbier detained by North Korean security services, the beginning of an 18-month ordeal for the 21-year-old American student, who finally returned to the United States in a coma this week. Until now, Gratton has not spoken publicly about the case.  He was never contacted by the U.S. government or the tour company that arranged the visit. His recollections form a part of the story that speaks to Warmbier’s innocence and further undermines the North Korean government’s version of events.

His message is that Warmbier was an innocent victim of a cruel and evil regime and did nothing to warrant his sad fate. “Otto was just a really great lad who fell into the most horrendous situation that no one could ever believe,”

Gratton told me in an interview Thursday. “It’s just something I think in the Western world we just can’t understand, we just can’t grasp, the evilness behind that dictatorship.” If you’re part of the subculture that never rejected the concept of evil, perhaps this isn’t that shocking. If you study history, the existence of evil isn’t shocking either. And if you’ve studied anything about the insanely brutal regime that rules North Korea, then no, this isn’t that surprising, either. Gratton said that in the four days they spent together, Warmbier never said an

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