North Korea slams the US over Winter Olympics invitation for father of 'tortured' student Otto Warmbier

North Korea has hit out at the US, accusing it of a ‘defamation campaign’ after Washington invited the father of Otto Warmbier to the Winter Olympics in South Korea.

Warmbier was the US college student who died after being arrested for stealing while on a trip to North Korea in 2016. He was 22-years-old when he passed away.

The family said their son was ‘systematically tortured’ by the North Koreans after he stole a Pyongyang hotel sign.

He passed away back home in the US but only after being released by the North Koreans in a comatose state after being held in prison for a year.

Otto’s dad, Fred, was one of those who travelled with US vice president Mike Pence to the opening of the games to ‘remind the world of the atrocities happening in North Korea’.

Now Pyongyang has hit back. In a statement, North Korea’s state run news agency said: ‘The United States is again kicking up a defamation campaign against the DPRK, intentionally attributing Warmbier’s death to the latter.’

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It also accused the Americans of using Warmbier’s death to step up pressure on its weapons programme.

‘It is a manifestation of crafty intention aimed at… stirring up an international pressure and vindicating its attempt to stifle us by force, as Trump… is terrified at the strength of the DPRK that has made a dignified rise to the status of strategic state,’ it said.

The US and North Korea have been at loggerheads in recent times over Pyongyang’s nuclear weapons programme.

The two leaders, Donald Trump and Kim Jong-un have even swapped insults as tensions between the two countries increase.

Pence was in South Korea at the same time as North Korean leader Kim Jong-un’s sister, Kim Yo Jong, attended the Pyeongchang Winter Olympics.

He has since said that he deliberately ignored Kim Yo so as not to give any attention to her or the North Korean regime.