Anchor: U.S. President Donald Trump had dinner with the parents of Otto Warmbier, the American college student who was returned to the U.S. in a vegetative state following over a year of captivity in North Korea. The meeting is interpreted by some as a signal to Pyongyang that additional sanctions remain an option for Washington.
Celia Yoon has more.

Report: A number of U.S. media outlets reported that U.S. President Donald Trump had dinner Saturday with the parents of an American college student that died less than a week after he was released from North Korean imprisonment.

Otto Warmbier died six days after returning to the U.S. in a vegetative state in 2017 following 17 months of captivity in North Korea. He was charged with trying to steal a propaganda poster.

The dinner was reportedly joined by Trump’s ambassador to Germany Richard Grenell, a possible candidate for national security adviser after John Bolton’s resignation last week.

The Warmbiers have been leading activities to improve human rights conditions in North Korea and claim that their son’s death was due to torture inflicted on him by the regime.

The dinner comes two days after Trump expressed hope that he may meet North Korean leader Kim Jong-un again at some point later this year.

Trump's dinner with the Warmbiers may be thus interpreted as a signal that the U.S. still has both carrots and sticks in its arsenal to use in negotiations with North Korea.

Former U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, meanwhile, said in an interview on CBS Sunday that the Trump administration deserves credit for having taken on the North Korea issue and that she finds no problem with how the current administration is going about it.

She said that patience has served the U.S. well on the Korean Peninsula, but that Washington is now feeling impatient. Rice called for a "new consensus" on the issue, adding that she hopes the U.S. will continue to believe in free markets and free peoples as it has served Washington well to do so in the past.
Celina Yoon, KBS World Radio News.

[Photo : YONHAP News]