US student imprisoned by North Korea dies days after release

By Steve Gorman

An American university student held prisoner in North Korea for 17 months has died at a Cincinnati hospital, just days after he was released from captivity in a coma.

Otto Warmbier, 22, who was arrested in North Korea while visiting as a tourist, had been described by doctors caring for him last week as having extensive brain damage that left him in a state of "unresponsive wakefulness."

"Unfortunately, the awful torturous mistreatment our son received at the hands of the North Koreans ensured that no other outcome was possible beyond the sad one we experienced today," the family said in a statement.

His family has said that Warmbier lapsed into a coma in March 2016, shortly after he was sentenced to 15 years of hard labour in North Korea.

Physicians at the University of Cincinnati Medical Center, where he died, said last Thursday that Warmbier showed no sign of understanding language or awareness of his surroundings, and had made no "purposeful movements or behaviors," though he was breathing on his own.

There was no immediate word from Warmbier's family on the cause of his death.

The circumstances of his detention in North Korea and what medical treatment he may have received there remained a mystery, but relatives have said his condition suggested that he had been physically abused by his captors.

The University of Virginia student and Ohio native was arrested, according to North Korean media, for trying to steal an item bearing a propaganda slogan.

Brutal regime

North Korea released Warmbier last week and said he was being freed "on humanitarian grounds."

The North Korean mission to the United Nations was not available for comment on Monday.

US President Donald Trump issued a statement offering condolences to the Warmbier family and denouncing "the brutality of the North Korean regime as we mourn its latest victim."

The president drew criticism in May when he said he would be "honoured" to meet North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.

"If it would be appropriate for me to meet with him, I would absolutely, I would be honoured to do it," Trump said in an interview.

"If it's under the, again, under the right circumstances. But I would do that."

The student's father, Fred Warmbier, said last week that his son had been "brutalised and terrorised" by the Pyongyang government and that the family disbelieved North Korea's story that his son had fallen into a coma after contracting botulism and being given a sleeping pill.

Doctors who examined Otto Warmbier after his release said there was no sign of botulism in his system.

Rising tensions

Warmbier was freed after the US State Department's special envoy on North Korea, Joseph Yun, travelled to Pyongyang and demanded the student's release on humanitarian grounds, capping a flurry of secret diplomatic contacts, a US official said last week.

Tensions between the United States and North Korea have been heightened by dozens of North Korean missile launches and two nuclear bomb tests since the beginning of last year in defiance of UN Security Council resolutions.

Pyongyang has also vowed to develop a nuclear-tipped intercontinental ballistic missile capable of hitting the US mainland.

China, North Korea's main ally, lamented Warmbier's death.

"It really is a tragedy. I hope that North Korea and the United States can properly handle the issue," Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang told a regular press briefing.

Asked if the death would have an impact on high-level US-China talks on Wednesday likely to focus on North Korea, Geng said China "remains committed to resolving the Korean Peninsula issue through dialogue and consultation".

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said the United States holds North Korea accountable for Warmbier's "unjust imprisonment" and demanded the release of three other US citizens still held by Pyongyang - Korean-Americans Tony Kim, Kim Dong Chul and Kim Hak Song.

Young Pioneer Tours, the group with which Warmbier travelled to North Korea, will no longer be organising tours for US citizens to the isolated country, Troy Collings, a company director, said in a statement.

Two of the other largest agencies to take Western tourists to North Korea also said they were reconsidering taking US tourists.