![American student Otto Frederick Warmbier (C) is escorted out of the courtroom after his trial in Pyongyang, capital of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK), on March 16, 2015. Otto Frederick Warmbier was sentenced to 15 years of hard labor for anti-DPRK crimes in March 2016. [File Photo: VCG]](http://img0.zhytuku.meldingcloud.com/images/zhycms_chinaplus/20181225/8a545822-251e-46a5-a673-6b975751afb3.jpg?x-oss-process=image/resize,w_650)
A federal judge has ordered the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea to pay more than $500 million in a wrongful death suit filed by the parents of Otto Warmbier, an American college student who died shortly after being released from that country.
U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell in Washington ordered the payment on Monday.
Warmbier was a University of Virginia student who was visiting the DPRK with a tour group when he was arrested and sentenced to 15 years of hard labor in March 2016 on suspicion of stealing a propaganda poster. He died in June 2017, shortly after he returned to the U.S. in a coma. His parents say he was tortured.
The judgment is largely a symbolic victory for now since there is no mechanism to force DPRK to pay.
