Otto Warmbier's family awarded $240k in seized North Korean assets

A federal judge in New York this month ordered that over $240,000 in seized North Korean bank assets be paid to the family of Otto Warmbier, an American university student who died in 2017 after imprisonment in North Korea.

Judge Lawrence E. Kahn said that while a 2018 judgement by a D.C. federal court found North Korea liable to pay the Warmbier family over $500 million, a much smaller seizure of $240,000 in seized assets from the Kwangson Banking Corporation, which is connected to the North Korean government, was identified in March 2021.

On Jan. 13, the judge ordered final transfer of the funds to the family within 10 days, ending one part of a long legal battle by Otto Warmbier's parents, Cindy and Fred Warmbier, who originally sought over $1 billion in damages.