More than a year went by without public word of Warmbier before the State Department learned of his dire condition on June 6.
Mr Portman told reporters that North Korea must be held accountable for what happened to the 22-year-old University of Virginia student, who died on Monday.
Fred and Cindy Warmbier watch as their son is placed in a hearse after his funeral on Thursday.
Asked whether Trump had lost faith in China's ability to restrain North Korea, Mattis said the president's view represented Americans' "frustration" with Pyongyang's provocations and after seeing "a young man go over there healthy, and with a minor act of mischief, come home dead, basically".
The KCNA news agency Friday said that Warmbier was treated in accordance with domestic law and said that allegations that he may have been tortured during almost 18 months in detention were "groundless".
"Although we had no reason at all to show mercy to such a criminal of the enemy state, we provided him with medical treatments and care with all sincerity on humanitarian basis until his return to the USA, considering that his health got worse", the spokesman said.
"One final time: people and government of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, I beg for forgiveness", Warmbier said during his trial, which lasted just one hour. The funeral will be at Wyoming High School, his alma mater where tributes will be paid to the late Warmbier, according to reports.
Earlier this week, Obama spokesman Ned Price said the previous administration "had no higher priority than securing the release of Americans detained overseas", and added that its efforts to secure Warmbier's release had "never ceased, even in the waning days of the administration".
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"To make it clear, we are the biggest victim of this incident and there would be no more foolish judgment than to think we do not know how to calculate gains and losses", he said.
"The smear campaign against [North Korea] staged in the United States compels us to make firm determination that humanitarianism and benevolence for the enemy are a taboo and we should further sharpen the blade of law", the spokesman added.
The article also criticized South Korea for using Warmbier's case to seek the release of other detainees, including six South Korean citizens.
North Korea said the sentence had been appropriate and called speculation that he had died as a result of beating or torture "groundless". Warmbier, who graduated from the school as salutatorian in 2013, will be buried at a local cemetery later in the day.
It demanded that South Korea return 12 restaurant workers who defected to the South a year ago. South Korea's Defense Ministry said the bombers engaged in routine exercises with its fighter jets aimed at deterring the North.
Sen. Bob Corker of Tennessee, the Republican chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, said the US should think about banning USA citizens from visiting North Korea.
Trump has been counting on China to use its economic leverage with the government of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un as American concern grows over the North's acceleration toward having a nuclear missile that can strike the USA mainland.
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