US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson says Otto Warmbier, an American student who was held in North Korea since last January, has been released.
In March 2016, Warmbier was sentenced to 15 years in prison with hard labor in North Korea for allegedly attempting to steal a propaganda sign while on a New Year's Eve tour.
The State Department announced Warmbier's release earlier Tuesday but gave no details on his condition. Here is the timeline. "We get to see our son Otto tonight", he said. Rodman has traveled to the isolated nation four times since 2013, attracting a lot of publicity, much of it unfavorable.
Warmbier's release came as former USA basketball star Dennis Rodman arrived in North Korea on Tuesday, returning to the increasingly isolated nuclear-armed country where he has previously met leader Kim Jong Un.
North Korea believes its missile program is the only way to deter Washington from trying to overthrow the regime of Supreme Leader Kim Jong Un.
Three U.S. citizens, all Korean Americans, remain in North Korean jails.
Warmbier was supposed to graduate from the University of Virginia in May.
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North Korea has woefully inadequate medical care and it is not clear how North Korean doctors had been caring for Warmbier during more than a year in an unconscious state.
"The Department of State continues to have discussions with the DPRK regarding three other USA citizens reported detained".
If Warmbier had been able to return to the USA, he would have graduated from college in May. Worldwide negotiations on the dispute over North Korea's nuclear program have been in limbo for years, as the US cranks up economic sanctions and North Korea won't give up weapons it considers a guarantee against invasion.
North Korea regularly accuses Washington and Seoul of sending spies to overthrow its government to enable the USA -backed South Korean government to take control of the Korean Peninsula. He identified the church as Friendship United Methodist Church. Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown of Cleveland said the country's "despicable actions. must be condemned". The Warmbiers were told that shortly after his trial that their son contracted botulism.
At a tearful press conference in February, Warmbier read a prepared statement and said he tried to take an "important political slogan from the staff-only area of the Yanggakdo International Hotel". "The last 17 months have been an extremely hard and emotionally trying time for the Warmbier family". There, Yun learned about Warmbier's "condition", the White House official said. In April, an Egyptian court acquitted Aya Hijazi, an Egyptian-American charity worker held for almost three years, after Trump raised her case with the Egyptian president.
In the past, North Korea has held out until senior US 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.
- South Korean-born US citizen Kim Dong Chul, who was sentenced in April 2016 to 10 years in prison with hard labor after being convicted of espionage. Fowle left a Bible in a local club hoping a North Korean would find it, which is considered a criminal offense in North Korea.
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