COLUMBUS – Governor John Kasich is calling on the North Korean government to release a college student from the Cincinnati area who was sentenced to 15 years of hard labor for stealing a propaganda banner.
Otto Warmbier, a 21-year-old University of Virginia undergraduate student from the Cincinnati suburb of Wyoming, was convicted of subversion and sentenced in a one-hour trial Wednesday morning at North Korea’s Supreme Court.
“His detention was completely unjustified and the sentence North Korea imposed on him is an affront to concepts of justice,” Kasich said in a statement issued by his office immediately following the sentencing. “Continuing to hold him only further alienates North Korea from the international community.”
Warmbier was arrested in early January as he tried to leave the country after visiting as a tourist with a New Year’s tour group.
In a statement made before his trial, he told a gathering of reporters in Pyongyang he wanted the banner “as a trophy” for the mother of a friend.
Former U.N. Ambassador Bill Richardson says he met with North Korean diplomats to request the Warmbier’s release of the day before the student was sentenced.
Richardson said he was neither encouraged nor discouraged by the meeting Tuesday with the diplomats from the North Korean mission to the U.N. They said they would relay his request to Pyongyang.
Richardson had met the diplomats in New York after Warmbier’s parents and Kasich requested his help.
Richardson said based on past experience, North Korea could release Warmbier after sentencing, but current U.S.-North Korean tensions could hurt those prospects.