The mother of Otto Warmbier, the college student who died shortly after being returned to the US from North Korea, on Friday called the country a “cancer” — and slammed the Trump administration’s diplomacy as a “charade.”
“Unless we keep the pressure on North Korea, they are not going to change. I’m very afraid we are going to let up on this pressure,” an emotional Cindy Warmbier said at an event in Washington, DC, according to ABC News.
“North Korea, to me, is a cancer on the Earth,” Warmbier said at the Hudson Institute event. “If we ignore this cancer, it’s not going to go away, it’s going to kill all of us.”
She referenced a recent report that Pyongyang slapped the US with a $2 million bill for Otto Warmbier’s hospital care and forced an American official to pledge to pay up before being allowed to fly the comatose 22-year-old man home in 2017 after 17 months in captivity.
Cindy Warmbier said that had she known that the Hermit Kingom wanted money, she would have paid.
President Trump has denied that the US paid North Korea for the release of the young man, who was arrested in January 2016 for allegedly stealing a propaganda poster during a visit.
Otto fell into a coma for unknown reasons a few months after being sentenced to 15 years of hard labor. The US arranged his transfer out of North Korea, but he died a few days later after falling into a vegetative state.
Pyongyang claimed he had fallen into a coma after contracting botulism and being given a sleeping pill — but he reportedly had been subjected to a severe beating.
In March, Cindy and her husband, Fred, criticized Trump for seeming to clear the North’s leader, Kim Jong Un, of knowledge about or responsibility for their son’s treatment and eventual death.
The president later tweeted that “Otto was tortured beyond belief by North Korea.”
On Friday, Cindy said that while she supported Trump’s effort to negotiate with the North Korean leader, she was not optimistic.
“There’s a charade going on right now — it’s called diplomacy. How can you have diplomacy with someone who never tells the truth? I’m very skeptical,” she said of Kim.
“He lies and he lies and he lies, all for himself,” she said. “The only difference between Hitler and [Kim] is that he’s doing it to all of his people.”
Warmbier described the horrific experience of seeing the condition her son was in after his return in June 2017.
“My gorgeous boy — who every girl had an immediate crush on — looked like a monster,” she said.
“The look in his eyes — which I didn’t know he was blind at the time — was absolute horror, horror like he had seen the devil — and he had. He was with the devil,” Warmbier added.