HANOI, Vietnam — President Trump said Thursday he’s convinced that North Korean leader Kim Jong-un didn’t know anything about the brutal treatment of American Otto Warmbier, who died in 2017 shortly after being released from a North Korean prison.
“I did speak to him about it,” Mr. Trump told reporters at the end of a shortened nuclear-weapons summit with Mr. Kim. “I don’t believe he knew about it. He felt badly about it. He knew the case very well.”
Mr. Warmbier, an Ohio college student visiting North Korea, died from brain injuries suffered during his imprisonment for a minor offense.
The president said “those prisons are rough. And bad things happen.”
But he said Mr. Kim didn’t know what happened to Mr. Warmbier.
“You got a lot of people [in prisons], big country,” Mr. Trump said.
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The president invited Mr. Warmbier’s parents to his State of the Union address in 2018 to highlight North Korea’s abysmal human-rights record.
• Dave Boyer can be reached at dboyer@washingtontimes.com.
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