North Korean athletes “are not really participating in the Olympics,” said the father of American student Otto Warmbier, who died last year after his release from imprisonment in North Korea.
North Korean athletes “are not really participating in the Olympics,” said the father of American student Otto Warmbier, who died last year after his release from imprisonment in North Korea.
Fred Warmbier, attending the 2018 Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, South Korea, as a guest of U. S. Vice President Mike Pence, said during excerpts of an interview posted Saturday that he doubts the symbolic significance of North Korean involvement in the games.
“We have to put this in context, in the spirit of the Olympics, and why we’re here,” Warmbier said in a preview clip of an interview with NBC’s Lester Holt. “And so when you put it that way they’re not really participating in the Olympics. Their athletes are not exchanging ideas with other athletes in the Olympic Village or really participating, so that’s a political statement.
