His tour guide, Young Pioneer Tours boasts that they organize "budget tours to destinations your mother would rather you stayed away from"-well, maybe mothers have a point".
A China-based travel agency says an American university student recently detained by North Korea is being held over an unspecified incident at his hotel before he was scheduled to board a flight for Beijing. The U.S. Department of State has warned against travel to the North, however, and visitors, especially those from America, who break the country's sometimes murky rules risk detention, arrest and possible jail sentences.
Warmbier is from OH and was studying finance at the University of Virginia.
The unnamed student had entered North Korea as a tourist, it said, and "aimed to destroy the country's unity".
An attorney who represented another southwest OH native detained by North Korea advises caution for those involved with a US university student who is now being held. "You have to be careful what you say".
The U.S. State Department said it could not confirm the CNN report.
Attempts to reach Warmbiers' parents and relatives were unsuccessful.
Warmbier is a Commerce School major at UVa and was traveling in North Korea earlier this month with a group called Young Pioneer Tours, the company specializes in tours of North Korea.
He said the 2014 detainee, Jeffrey Fowle, is "doing wonderful" and seems to have adjusted well to life at his home near Dayton.
Warmbier is now a student at the University of Virginia.
The US State Department, in a statement, said it was aware of reports that a US citizen had been detained in North Korea but gave no other details, citing privacy concerns. After ringing in the new year with claims of its first successful hydrogen bomb test, North Korea is now calling on the United States and the world community to accept it as a nuclear power, jettison the pursuit of punitive sanctions and allow it to focus on what it really wants: build up the nations troubled economy.
In recent years, North Korea has taken a number of Americans into custody, often for activities related to spreading Christianity and often only releasing them when a high-profile dignitary visits Pyongyang.
A Canadian pastor and a Korean-American man are also being held by the secretive East Asian state.
The two countries signed a ceasefire agreement in 1953 after the three-year Korean War but technically remain in a state of war.
Iran warns US warship to leave naval drill area
In the past, the Islamic republic carried out a number of navy drills in the Strait of Hormuz, the Sea of Oman, the north of the Indian Ocean, the Gulf of Aden and the Bab-el-Mandeb Strait.
