00:00Why do people still travel to North Korea to get arrested and die there?
00:05What happened to Otto Warmbier dot dot dot asterisk why do people still travel to North Korea?
00:12It's not for the beaches. It's not for relaxation.
00:16No one goes there to unwind people go for one reason.
00:19Because it's the most closed, secretive country on Earth, researchers call it dark tourism.
00:25The thrill of stepping into a place the rest of the world only sees on the news.
00:30A living time capsule.
00:32A country that feels like Orwell's 1984.
00:36Where every move is watched, every photo is controlled, and every street is staged.
00:42You don't travel alone.
00:43You go on a state-approved tour.
00:46Two-minders with you at all times.
00:48A fixed itinerary.
00:50Pyongyang, the DMZ.
00:52And giant statues you have to photograph a certain way.
00:56One wrong picture.
00:57One wrong turn into a staff-only floor.
01:00And you can be in serious trouble.
01:02And that's exactly what happened to Otto Warmbier dot in December 2015.
01:07Otto was a 22-year-old student at the University of Virginia.
01:12Smart, popular, about to start his final semester.
01:16He booked a five-day New Year's tour to North Korea.
01:19Just out of curiosity dot asterisk on January 2, 2016, at the Yonggokdo Hotel in Pyongyang.
01:27He was arrested at the airport as he was leaving.
01:30North Korea said he had tried to steal a propaganda banner from a restricted floor of the hotel.
01:36What followed was not a normal trial.
01:38He was held for months, then sentenced in a one-hour courtroom show to 15 years of hard labor.
01:44For 17 months, he disappeared.
01:47The U.S. had no consular access dot then in June 2017.
01:52North Korea suddenly announced they were releasing him on humanitarian grounds.
01:57When American doctors saw him, he was in a coma, unresponsive.
02:02He had suffered catastrophic brain damage.
02:05North Korea claimed it was botulism and a sleeping tail.
02:08U.S. doctors found no evidence of that dot he had been in that state for nearly a year.
02:13He was flown home to Cincinnati, Ohio, six days later.
02:18On June 19, 2017, Otto Warmbier died.
02:22He was to to dot his death changed everything.
02:25Weeks later, the U.S. State Department made American passports invalid for travel to North Korea dot since COVID in
02:322020.
02:33The country has been almost entirely sealed off again, except for a few controlled Russian tour groups dot so why
02:41do people still want to go?
02:42Because human curiosity is powerful.
02:46People want to see what's behind the curtain for themselves, but North Korea is a reminder that curiosity there comes
02:52with rules that don't exist anywhere else.
02:54And the cost of breaking them can be your life.
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