Otto Warmbier escorted to a North Korean court in March 2016 [AP Yonhap News Archive]

A U.S. court has ruled in favor of the family of Otto Warmbier, the deceased American student who was held in detention in North Korea, in a lawsuit seeking the payment of frozen North Korean assets.

According to the ruling obtained by Yonhap News Agency on the 16th (local time), U.S. District Judge Beryl A. Howell of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia ordered JP Morgan Chase Bank on the 11th to pay $17,131,065.73 (approximately 26 billion won) in frozen assets to Mr. Warmbier's parents.

Warmbier's parents had requested the court to allow them to receive the frozen funds held by JP Morgan Chase Bank, which they claimed were assets related to the network of Dr. A.Q. Khan of Pakistan, a key external facilitator of North Korea's nuclear weapons development. The court granted this request.

In her ruling on that day, Judge Howell described the A.Q. Khan network as acting as "North Korea's agent or instrumentality," and assessed that the plaintiffs had proven that the Khan network was the effective transmittor of the frozen funds.

Warmbier was detained in North Korea in 2016 while visiting as a tourist and was sentenced to 15 years of labor reform for subversion of state power. He was released in a comatose state in June of the following year, returned to the United States, and died six days later.

The family filed a lawsuit against the North Korean regime in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia in 2018 to hold it accountable for Warmbier's death and was awarded $500 million in damages. They subsequently pursued North Korean assets scattered around the world.

Previously, the family had their rights recognized to a portion of the proceeds from the sale of a North Korean ship seized by the U.S. government for violating UN sanctions, $240,000 in North Korean frozen assets seized by New York State authorities, and approximately $2.2 million in North Korean-related assets deposited with New York Mellon Bank.