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I'm Suryuti. I'm Hannah and welcome to Redhanded. Today we are covering a bit of a different case because it starts out

with a pretty mundane crime and accusation of poster theft.

But it ends in the death of a 22-year-old student, and most of you will probably already know his name.

Today we are delving into the bizarre and tragic story of Otto Wombeer, a 22-year-old all-American college student who in 2015 went on an adventure holiday, became a prisoner of a hostile rogue state, and died.

The mystery here is that no one really knows what Otto endured during his 15-month captivity or why he really died.

And it's an understandable conclusion to think. Well, of course, he was arrested by the North Koreans,

and they probably work slash torture him to death in one of their prison camps.

But the thing is, those camps are almost exclusively for their own people, so other North Koreans who dissent and need to be punished by the brutal regime.

This case raises a very important question about why Pyongyang broke with its supposedly normal practice,

and injured the young Americans so horrifically that he came home in a coma and died.

This isn't what normally happens to Westerners arrested in North Korea.

But before we get there, there are many other questions to tackle. Like, what made an American college student go to Pyongyang in the first place?

What kind of nightmare might he have endured while in captivity?

And how did his eventual death impact global political affairs and almost push America into a war with North Korea?

And this is definitely one of the most surreal cases we've covered.

I watched the news when this happened, and I lived in South Korea for a time.

Before this happened though, I was thinking about it how much more I would have had to say if I was in Korea when this happened.

But having said that, I did think that I knew the story, but having looked into it, it's much worse and much weirder than I ever thought it was.

First, let's talk about Otto and start at the beginning.

He really was all American.

And that's how you see him described all over the shop.

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