S9, Chapter 1: Otto Warmbier

0:03 Tapes from the Dark Side contains descriptions of violence and sexuality. Listener discretion is advised. As an American citizen detained for severe crimes in the Dprkorea, I have feared that I may receive torture or mental pressure. That was my totally wrong thinking. I have been given the most humanitarian treatment in a hotel class guest house, with no torture or mental pressure. I have been very impressed by the Korean government's humanitarian treatment of severe criminals like myself, and of their very fair and square legal procedures in the DPR Korea. I am the most ashamed I have been in my life for committing a crime in such a friendly country, and I have no idea what sort of penalty I may face, but I am begging to the Korean people and government for my forgiveness. I think everyone has a bit of a fascination with the Dark Side. I think it's something that everyone secretly longs forign loves. He's strapped to the stretcher, moving around violently. He's got a feeding tube, and his bottom teeth looked like they had taken a pair of pliers and rearrange Them's the dark side of

1:44 the dark. Despite his German sounding name, Otto Warmbier was an all American boy. He was also Jewish on his mother's side and was an active member of a Jewish campus organization when he was in college. He also visited Israel on a birthright trip in twenty fourteen. He was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, went to school at Wyoming High School in Wyoming, Ohio, and would later go on to attend the University of Virginia, pursuing a double major in commerce and economics. Otto's middle name was Frederick, after his father, Fred Warmbier, who was a businessman and also a proud Republican. The stars and stripes were displayed outside the Warrember Home, a rather lavish five bedroom house that's currently estimated at one point two million dollars. Otto excelled in school and had these second best grades in high school of his entire class. He was also a soccer player and a swimmer, and was crowned the prom king by his peers. Otto was that kind of rare kid who was smart, athletic, but also humble and well liked among his peers. Walking around in the hallways at school, you don't really expect seniors to come up to you as a freshman, and he was one of the only guys who would come to me and asked me how my day was doing, and that kind of thing.

3:09 So you could just tell that he was a great, really kind hearted guy and really really well liked guy. At Wyoming, coming into high school freshman year, you don't really know a lot of the upperclassmen. And then all of a sudden, I find myself on the soccer team with a great guy who happened to me named Otto Warrembier, And immediately you could tell that he was one of the most well like people in the school system at Wyoming. Everybody kind of congregated around him. He would tell stories to all everybody on the team he included, and keep practices and games really lighthearted. Everybody just thought he was a great guy. So he's a very spirited guy from what I understand, love to travel. So it did not surprise me when I heard that he was in North Korea in the first place, and when he had been taken, honestly, because that's just who he is, you know, he loves to adventure and that kind of thing. He would like you said, he went on birthright for Israel, Auto developed a passion for thrift store shopping, as he called it memorabilia investing. A hobby of his that was adjacent to this was his love of secondhand Hawaiian T shirts, which he was often seen wearing. In his high school graduation speech, he opened up and admitted to struggling to find words to fit the theme of the speech and resorted to quoting, of all things, the television show The Office. So I decided to resort to a fail prof method of research. I'm sure all of my fellow graduates are very familiar with, get frustrated, to give off and go watch DV. That was when I got lucky. The Offspinale was on. I'd seen it twice but had no objections to watching it a third time. I expected to get a few lass, relax a bit, and

4:42 come back to writing my speech with a new, more refreshed mindset. I didn't expect that Andy Bernard, the man named by the pop culture magazine Vulture is one of the tenth most annoying characters on television, would say the perfect quote to describe this class. But somehow he beat out Heaving Way, King and Tyson end as all the employees in the show, we're beginning to go their separate ways and begin new, exciting lives, much like we all are right now. He just described his feelings. He didn't use any big words or elaborate metaphors. He just spoke. I wish there was a way to know that you're in the good old days before you've actually left them. To me, that one sentence completely captured the feeling in this graduation. This is our season finale. This is the end of one great show, but just the beginning to hundreds of new spinoffs. Today mark's the splitting of a group that has succeeded everyone's expectations. But our plot wasn't without its low ones.

5:44 We didn't win flow Building ever, and we made him been in the first class also ever at Wyoming to not win the All ZHL Sports Award, Otto was preparing for what seemed to be an extraordinarily bright future at the University of Virginia. He obtain into scholarship and wanted to follow in his father's footsteps, becoming some kind of banker or businessman. In addition to the sports and academics, Otto also joined a fraternity during his college days. One that was famously proudly nerdy. Otto obtained a finance internship in his junior year, and over the winter holiday, he began mentally preparing to take on school and this internship, so he decided to try to find some kind of adventure that would take his mind off of his upcoming academics. Auto set his sights on Hong Kong, and in typical Auto fashion, he signed up for a week long finance course which was also sponsored by his university. And that is where our story would end if it were not for what was called the New Year's Eve Party Tour. The New Year's Eve Party Tour was a five day trip sponsored by a group named Young Pioneer Tours. It's a travel company based in China who host a variety of tours, but the one that they're known for is to the Democratic People's Republic of Korea commonly referred to as North Korea, a totalitarian

7:16 nation who is known for the systematic torture of their own people at the hands of their dictator leader. Despite on the surface this seeming like a risky decision to visit such a repressive country, since the early nineteen nineties, only sixteen US nationals have ever been detained in North Korea. Most of them were spies or people who admitted to illegally entering the country, and every one of those sixteen nationals were eventually released. That's sixteen out of thousands, perhaps tens of thousands of tourists who had entered North Korea in the past few decades. And so when Auto made the decision to sign up the North Korean Tour among twenty other young adventurers, he was excited, but he had no idea that despite it being a five day tour, he wouldn't be leaving the country anytime soon.

8:13 Otto would go on to be sentenced to fifteen years of hard labor inside a North Korea re education camp, and when he was finally returned to the United States, he was brain dead and in a coma from which he would never recover. In twenty fifteen, Otto made the journey to China to begin a study abroad program, and then on December twenty nine, twenty fifteen, Auto flew via Beijing to North Korea with his tour group and they began what would be a five day New Year's tour. Otto Warmbier was a board an old Soviet jet crossing into North Korean airspace, where the onboard announcements welcome you to a nation state, which is also a state of mind. He man is there Immediately. Otto and his travel group hit the ground running, going on a guided tour of Pyongyang, the country's capital on billboards everywhere. Former leaders Kim Il sung and Kim Jong il grandfather and father of current dictator Kim Jong un, Augustine Feliciano made a similar trip two months before Otto. We would see normal North Koreans walking around on the street, people going to work, coming home from work, Soldiers. It's a city teeming with military, the world's fourth largest army. Children everywhere walking in formation, singing praise for their nation. There would be a couple of times when we would think is

9:46 that staged. The group would stay at the Yangakto International Hotel, which would play a crucial role in our story. The Angato is a towering structure on an island in the middle of the Taidong River. This river cuts right through the heart of central Pyongyang. Jiangyang is the capital of North Korea, and it also happens to be the most populous city, with over three million people. The Yangakto is one of the most popular tourist hotels, and it is quite massive. There are five total restaurants in the building, including a rotating restaurant. In the basement of the Yangakto. There's a bowling alley. There's also a pool room, a sauna including an on call massus, a swimming pool, a barber shop, and even a casino. And while visitors were welcome and encouraged to explore nearly every area of the hotel, there was one floor that was strictly off limits, and that was floor number five. Is it possible that Auto was drawn to explore this off limits space in the same way he had been drawn to explore the one country where most vacationers would scoff at the mere idea of visiting. On the surface, autowarm Beer was straight edged, straight laced, all American student. But is it possible that's hidden from the outside world? Auto warm Beer had a dark side New Year's Eve

11:31 celebration December thirty feet, twenty fifteen. As the sun began to set on the final day of twenty fifteen, an air of anticipation lingered among the members of the tour group. They'd embarked on a thrilling trip, and it was their last real night to celebrate. They had a full day of touring scheduled for the following day, January first, but they would need to be in bed early that night to get up for their morning flight on January second. Little did they know that the hours ahead would lead to tragedy. With the conclusion of the journey drawing near, the group decided to indulge in the revelry of the new year by venturing into an upscale bar nearby. This is where the events of the night are contentious. According to QC magazine's thoughtful article on the Auto Warmbier case, which is nearly thirty pages long, they state that, according to Danny Gratten, no one got belligerently drunk, as some reports would later suggest. Now who is Danny Gratton, Well, he was Otto's roommate during the trip. Records show they were the only two solo travelers on the tour, a unique circumstance that drew them even closer together, giving rise to a fast friendship. We'll hear more from Danny later on, as he's one of the last people to ever see Auto in person alive and in good health now. Danny says that no one got belligerently drunk that night, and

13:01 he seems to have no motive to lie. That's what I initially thought. But this is actually my second time recording this section of this episode because I've come across information that cast an entirely new light on that final night in Pyongyang. I did some digging into the Young Pioneers tour group that Otto and Danny were traveling with, and they seem to have garnered quite a reputation in the industry, and not the good kind. Interviews with former tour group members reflect an organization lacking in structure, an enthusiastic drinking culture, and an apathetic attitude towards safety. Adam Pitt, a thirty three year old brit who went on a Young Pioneer's tour back in twenty thirteen, said that their tour guide was often drunk. He said that there was an incident when the guide had to interact with border agents he was almost unable to stand and barely understandable when he did speak. The Associated Press reports that a tourist in the Young Pioneers group once did a handstand outside of mausoleum in Pyongyang, which resulted in a North Korean woman losing her job, and in yet another stunt, the founder Britain Johnson notoriously jumped off a moving train while drunk and broke his ankle. In that same Associated Press article, it talks about two tourists who are on the same trip as Auto in twenty fifteen, and they say that the group did party and drink until early morning hours. I could not find a direct copy

14:35 of the interview with these two travelers, only a brief mention in the article quote Nick Calder, a New Zealander in dera O tulathale I'm sure I butchered that name an Irish tourist. Both recalled that the New Year's Party tour group who traveled in Pyongyang in late December twenty fifteen was cruising until early morning. Tw I declined to discuss his recollections of the trip with the Associated Press, saying that he wanted to let the warrember's family grieve in peace. Is it possible that o'toolasale knew something that he didn't want to talk about for perhaps other reasons. It's important to note here that this detail might not be important.

15:20 Perhaps they had a few drinks, perhaps they were all roaring drunk. But at the end of the day, one thing is clear. The disreputable history of Young Pioneers tours leaves us with more questions than answers. What we do know is that after the bar visit, the group returned to the Angato hotel. This is around three am. The group begins to split up, and in such a large hotel, there are many options for the group's members. Danny says he lost track of Auto at that point and they went their separate ways. Some went to another bar in the hotel for another drink, but Danny joined a group repetted for the hotel's bowling alley. Danny says he then turned in around four thirty am, at which time, upon returning to the room, he saw Otto already in his bed and fast asleep. Therein lies our mystery ninety minutes of time from three am to four thirty am. Where was Otto during this hour and a half and what was he doing? January first, twenty sixteen, It was New Year's Day and was the last full day of the tour. The group started bright and early with a helicopter tour of Pyongyang City. This included a flyby of the one hundred and five story Ryugyong Hotel, a stunning view of the Taedong River, and a look at the May Day Stadium. The story of the May Day Stadium is quite fascinating.

16:53 It was built in nineteen eighty nine and is the largest capacity stadium in the world, seating a stunning one hundred and fourteen thousand people. We know that Otto and their group also visited the Grand Monument that day because we have pictures of them posing in front of it. The Mansou Hill Grand Monument is not so much a tourist spot as it is a place of worship, so to speak. A handful of workers stand by at all times to keep the area spotless from trash or debris. Tourists are allowed to visit, but are encouraged to show utmost respect at all times. The highlight of the Grand Monument is two giant bronze statues, each towering overhead at twenty two meters or seventy two feet tall. The first such statue is of the founder of North Korea, Kim Ilsong, and the second statue is his son, Kim Jong il There's currently no statue of Kim Jong un, but it is without a doubt that after his death he will join his father and grandfather. The Kim dynasty has ruled North Korea with an iron fish since its inception in nineteen forty eight.

18:03 It remains to this day one of the most, if not the most totalitarian dictatorships in the history of mankind. Simple pleasures that we take for granted every day as American citizens are not just taboo in North Korea, but they can end up getting you killed or worse, as we will find out in North Korea, there exists many such fates worse than death. Coming up in the next episode of Tapes from the Dark Side. The fifth floor of the Angato Hotel and someone who's been there. We were kind of given full rain of the hotel except for one floor. The elevator skipped Florm five six seventy nine. Ten Travel blogger Calvin's Sun didn't want to speculate, he wanted to see it, so in twenty eleven he and some friends snucked onto the fifth floor. He was serious fifth floor and videotaped it. I'm tz Borden and I've been your host today. Thank you for listening to tapes from the dark Side. Independent shows like ours live and die by word of mouth. We basically have zero marketing budget, so we rely on you to get the word out. Maybe it's a text group chat, maybe it's a Facebook thread for podcast recommendations, or a Reddit post. It might not seem like much, but every single time you share the podcast name, it grows just a little

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22:32 If I mispronounced your name, or if I somehow missed you, but you signed up, then please shoot me an email and let me know. Tapes from the Darkside Pod at gmail dot com. I put in anywhere from forty to sixty hours a week making the show, and I truly appreciate every single dollar you can give to help support the research cost, website costs, the time, editing fees, and just everything else that goes into making the show. Truly, I'm grateful for every single dollar you give. If you want to support the show, go to Patreon dot com slash Tapes from the Dark Side. This is our second time working with a writer and it was a fabulous experience. Thank you to Crissa Collins, who was the head writer for this season. Thank you to twenty six hundred for allowing us to adapt this song for our main theme. Thank you to Augusta Trevor Orum whose original music we used in the show. Today and remember, until next time, try to enjoy the daylight. It is still in sti