Fred, we're delighted to have you here.
I think it's-- I think it bears noting
that you don't usually give press interviews
and we are, this is certainly not a press interview.
I wanted to have a conversation with you, to sort of bring some humanity to what's going on
in certain places, in this particular case, North Korea.
Can you tell me about your son, Otto?
Sure, thank you for having me here.
This is gonna make his mother proud. Otto was our first baby.
We were in our mid 30s when we had Otto, and he was a normal kid, he played sports.
He had great energy, enthusiastic.
And he, as he grew up, we would do interesting things, and one of the things that latched on
well, to back up, Otto passed away a little less than a year ago, and Cindy and I were too tore up
too broken up, to speak at the funeral.
So we thought it would be good if we had four of Otto's friends, and his brother Austin
and his sister speak at the funeral.
And they want, they asked us, "What should we say?"
And we said, "We'd like you to think of--
it's 10 years down the road, and somebody asks you, 'What was Otto like?'"
And so, we heard all sorts of neat things
so I'll tell you what Otto was like to me, as a parent.
When he was 12 or so, I took him to a flea market
and I gave him 10 dollars to buy things, and that evolved--
and I mentioned to him that I knew this gentleman who didn't have a lot of money
but he was always dressed really nice.
And he said, "Well, where did he buy his clothes?" And I said, "At the thrift store."
And Otto became a thrift shopper from that moment on.
And so he loved to go to thrift stores and buy clothes.
And he has enough clothes to fill a room, and he probably spent 20 dollars on them.
And so that was the kind of guy he was.
That's the way his mind worked, and I bought him a car when he was 16.
It was a four door, big, junky car. And I kind of forgot about it. He drove it. He didn't care what it was like.
And I visited him at college in his second year, and I went to his room, and I looked at his room
and he didn't have a bed, and he had this child's desk there.
And, it was three weeks into the year, and I said, "Otto, where's your furniture?"
And he said, "Well, I don't really need it, Dad. I can sleep on the couch, and they got me this desk."
So we went out, and we took his car, and I hadn't been in it in years, and the power steering didn't work.
And we go get a box spring and a mattress and we tie it on and we bring it back
and it's, "Otto, why don't we fix your steering?"
"Well, I didn't think about it, Dad." So I sent it out and had it fixed.
So, he was this guy that was just very comfortable in doing what he loved
and he was passionate about learning. And he could-- that's what he loved.
And he had these accolades that we really never paid attention to.
He was-- he never missed a day of school
in his entire preschool all the way through high school.
Never missed a day of school.
Always brought home great grades. And, I'm very proud of this.
Last September, the president of the University of Virginia visited our house
and in two years Otto had earned enough credits to earn a degree in economics from
the university he attended. So I'm really proud of that. But that's who Otto was.
Why did he visit North Korea?
He...I encourage my kids to be curious about the world.
And I will help them see the world. And I think that's important.
And he was gonna be on a J-term over in Singapore, with his school, and he somehow,
one of his teachers suggested, "Hey, you can visit North Korea."
And he thought that would be a good idea, and we did too.
At the time, 200 Americans a year would visit North Korea.
So it wasn't this super crazy idea. It was, okay, you're young, this is your time
to do these things. I support that.
The North Korean government, they put on a show trial.
They tried your son, and they sentenced him to 15 years of hard labor.
Yeah, they did. And that... so...
Some things that I've discovered, as we've moved forward with this, are, there's...
We have a bias towards the way we interpret things that happen in really bad places.
For example, they just released three hostages from North Korea.
Well, most of the media called them "detainees," and yet, they're clearly "hostages."
And so, it's...
When Otto was taken, and they...we would meet with the state department
and they said, "Well, your son is essentially a hostage."
And I... "Well, no, he's either a hostage or he's not a hostage."
And I had friends in the government that said, "Well, we're happy that the detainees are home."
And I called and I said, "Well, they're hostages."
Why are we letting North Korea control the debate here? Why are we letting...
They use the term detainees. When they're really hostages.
And so, then I read an article and it said Otto died from his injuries in North Korea.
And it's... we sanitize the facts for the benefit of North Korea, and I think that's a mistake.
So in this particular case, which is like so many other cases, which is like so many other cases,
we hear about North Korean defectors and what they suffer, and what they live through.
Do you find in any way that you can relate to the North Korean people's suffering?
Do you have an insight that others don't, with regard to the suffering that people in North Korea have?
Were you able to visit him? Were you able to communicate with him?
No. North Korea is, in my...
We treated North Korea with respect, and dignity
and they, they just destroyed our son, and tried to destroy our family.
We were not allowed to visit Otto. We were not allowed to communicate with him.
We couldn't provide him with counsel. We mentioned his trial. We gotta be honest about this.
That was the equivalent of a Nazi show trial.
And, and what they did to my son, when they used him as a political prisoner, as a pawn
and really, they used him as a scapegoat for their failed country.
They're not a country. They're a criminal enterprise, where the people of North Korea are hostages.
You know, I learned all this, I had no idea, or no concept.
So do I, do I relate to the defectors that I've met from North Korea?
I have tremendous respect for them.
I think it's, I think it's fantastic that Yeonmi Park is going to Columbia.
Ji Seong-ho is doing work, and we need more of that. That's important.
You mentioned that the North Korean government is essentially not really a country, it's a criminal enterprise,
and the leader of this criminal enterprise
is going to be having a...they're planning a summit with democratically-elected leaders.
What is your, what is your sense, and what is your opinion of that?
Sure. So, we have two tracks for our...there's two tracks here.
We would call that the diplomatic track, and then we would call this our Otto track.
They're not mutually exclusive, but they're very different. So it's very important for our family
to focus on seeking justice for Otto.
So we filed a lawsuit against North Korea, and Yong-ho Ri should have received that by now.
It's a wrongful death lawsuit. So our focus is very narrow, and it's on...
we want to continue to force them to be answerable for their treatment of our son, Otto.
We don't... Otto didn't have botulism.
And yet, they think they can take people, and they can destroy their lives
and they can not be held responsible for it.
So, in our small way, we're trying to build a pathway to the government of North Korea,
to build a pathway to the government of North Korea
and hopefully other people will be able to use this path, and so that's the track we're on.
The diplomatic track, with negotiations or whatever, I support them. I think it's...
not talking to North Korea has helped foster and create the world's most threatening, barbaric dictatorship.
I don't know if talking to them is gonna change it
but at least it'll bring them out of their hole, and force them to engage.
So, I don't think that's a bad idea at all.
But I don't follow it. I'm more focused on my son, and what I can do for my son
and I hope that by doing this, that others can be helped as well.
Fred, what would bring an end to this nightmare for you?
I'm not gonna get what I want. I want Otto. I want Otto.
There's no plan here. We didn't wake up and say, "Okay, we wanna change the world."
We don't wanna change the world.
We want them to be accountable for Otto,
and that's where I think we've made a mistake with North Korea, we say, "Oh, they're crazy"
we back off, and people just, they do such horrible things to people
they try to get you to live in a constant state of fear, in fear of them, and they're really cowards
and they're...so, you don't have to be afraid of them.
So, I'm not gonna get what I want. I want my son back.
But still, I'm gonna, I'm gonna not let them get away with what they did.
I'm gonna do everything in my power to force them to be answerable to what they did to my son.
Fred Warmbier, thank you. Thank you very much.
Thank you.