“The biggest question is, why would anyone go there?” she asked. “What kind of tour company takes people to North Korea?”

Neighbors and fellow Americans wonder aloud as the Warmbier family celebrates the return of their son.

For much of the 17 months that Mr. Warmbier was in North Korean custody, his parents maintained a public silence. A family friend, Michael Forsythe, said officials in the Obama administration had urged the Warmbiers “to kind of keep quiet, to not rustle feathers because you could interfere and make things worse.”

But eventually, Mr. Forsythe said, the couple concluded that their silence had done little or nothing. Last month, they spoke out on the Fox News program Fox & Friends, amid rising tensions between the United States and North Korea over the North’s nuclear weapons program.

“Nothing Otto may or may not have done in North Korea rises to this level of punishment,” the father, Fred, said then. He added that he wanted his son to be “included in any dialogue or diplomacy with North Korea.”
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Speaking to a packed news conference at the local high school, the father, Fred Warmbier, also praised the administration of President Trump for working to free his son, and made clear his displeasure with the administration of former President Barack Obama, whose officials had advised the family to stay quiet so as not to antagonize the North Koreans.

“The result speak for themselves,” Mr. Warmbier said.