North Korea is expected to pay more than 500 million US dollars (about 438 million euros) to the family of the deceased student Otto Warmbier. That was decided by a US federal court in Washington.
North Korea was responsible for the imprisonment, torture and death of the young man and for the pain that Warmbiers family suffered as a result.
At the end of 2015, the then 21-year-old Otto Warmbier was arrested after a group trip to the country on his departure and sentenced to 15 years in a forced labor camp for "hostile actions against the state".
He died a few days after returning to the US in June 2016 - he had been in a coma for 15 months. (Read the chronology of the case here.)
Warmbier's family had sued dictator Kim Jong Un's North Korean regime for "brutal torture and murder."
The verdict is initially only of symbolic value, as there is no way to actually force North Korea to pay.