North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un just released an American student he’d been holding hostage — but not before his jackbooted thugs put the young man into a coma.
North Korea has released an American college student who was serving a 15-year prison term with hard labor, U.S. and North Korean officials said Tuesday. Otto Warmbier’s parents said he was in a coma and being medically evacuated.
The announcement on Warmbier’s release came as former NBA player Dennis Rodman was paying a return visit to Pyongyang. Rodman is one of few people to have met both North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and President Donald Trump. But Rodman said the issue of several Americans detained by North Korea is “not my purpose right now.”
Secretary of State Rex Tillerson announced that the State Department had secured Warmbier’s release at the direction of the president. He said Warmbier, 22, of Cincinnati, Ohio, was en route to the U.S. where he will be reunited with his family. Tillerson made no mention of Rodman’s visit, and said the department would have no further comment on Warmbier and his condition, citing privacy concerns.
Fred and Cindy Warmbier said in a statement that their son is in a coma and flying home. They said they have been told their son has been in a coma since March 2016 – when he was last seen in public, at his trial – and they had learned of this only one week ago.
“We want the world to know how we and our son have been brutalized and terrorized by the pariah regime” in North Korea, they said. “We are so grateful that he will finally be with people who love him.”
Tillerson said that the State Department is continuing “to have discussions” with North Korea about the release of other three American citizens who are jailed there.
Warmbier, 22, a University of Virginia undergraduate, was convicted and sentenced in a one-hour trial in North Korea’s Supreme Court in March 2016. He was sentenced to 15 years in prison with hard labor for subversion as he tearfully confessed that he had tried to steal a propaganda banner.
The U.S. government condemned the sentence and accused North Korea of using such American detainees as political pawns.
Republican Sen. Rob Portman of Ohio said in a statement that Tillerson had confirmed to him Warmbier’s release. He said that over the past 18 months, Warmbier’s family has “had to endure more than any family should have to bear.” He said Warmbier’s sentence was “unnecessary and appalling.” Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown of Cleveland described North Korea’s actions as “despicable.”
In the past, North Korea has held out until senior U.S. officials or statesmen came to personally bail out detainees, all the way up to former President Bill Clinton, whose visit in 2009 secured the freedom of American journalists Euna Lee and Laura Ling.
In November 2014, U.S. spy chief James Clapper went to Pyongyang to bring home Matthew Miller, who had ripped up his visa when entering the country and was serving a six-year sentence on an espionage charge, and Korean-American missionary Kenneth Bae, who had been sentenced to 15 years for alleged anti-government activities.
Jeffrey Fowle, another U.S. tourist from Ohio detained for six months at about the same time as Miller, was released just before that and sent home on a U.S. government plane. Fowle left a Bible in a local club hoping a North Korean would find it, which is considered a criminal offense in North Korea.
The Associated Press contributed to this article