The announcement on Otto Warmbier's release came as former National Basketball Association player Dennis Rodman was paying a return visit to Pyongyang.
Former NBA basketball player Dennis Rodman, center, prepares to go through immigration at Beijing Capital International Airport in Beijing, Tuesday, June 13, 2017. Ultimately it may have come down to Dennis Rodman.
Warmbier was on a New Year's Eve tour in North Korea, en route to Hong Kong, where he was to do a January study-abroad trip. He visited Warmbier with two doctors on Monday, and demanded his release on humanitarian grounds. He has visited North Korea four times, including a 2014 trip where he was shadowed by a crew from Vice.
A senior Trump administration official earlier told Fox News Rodman was going to the North "as a private citizen".
A plane carrying University of Virginia student Otto Warmbier, who had been detained in North Korea for 17 months and was in a coma for most of it, touched down in Cincinnati on Tuesday night. The Trump administration's secretary of state, Rex Tillerson, reportedly worked to secure Warmbier's release.
North Korea poses one of the greatest national security challenges for Trump as it tries to develop a nuclear-tipped missile that could strike America. He is scheduled to meet North Korea's sports minister before he leaves the country on Saturday.
Following the May meeting in Oslo, North Korea urgently requested another meeting, which took place last week between the US envoy on North Korea, Joseph Yun, and the North's ambassador at the U.N.in NY.
USA student Otto Frederick Warmbier who was arrested for committing hostile acts against North Korea.
University President Teresa Sullivan said in a statement that the school is relieved to hear Warmbier was released, but is concerned about his condition.
It was not immediately clear if Rodman's visit to North Korea was purely coincidental with Warmbier's release.
Parents say U.S. student released from North Korea is in coma
There is an internet urban legend that North Korea is a pothead paradise and maybe even the next Amsterdam of pot tourism. He says in a statement that the State Department secured Warmbier's release at the direction of President Donald Trump .
The University of Virginia student, who was a native of the Cincinnati, Ohio, area, was sentenced to 15 years of prison and hard labor for stealing a political propaganda poster from his Pyongyang hotel room.
The Washington Post cited Warmbier's parents as saying he had been medically evacuated from North Korea in a coma.
Tillerson did not elaborate on Warmbier's current health condition, and said he would not be offering additional comment out of respect for the family's privacy.
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.
The three other Americans detained by North Korea remain there. A 2009 visit by former President Bill Clinton secured the freedom of American journalists Euna Lee and Laura Ling.
Rodman has been criticized for failing to use his influence on leaders who are otherwise isolated diplomatically from the rest of the world.
Two Ohio senators are denouncing North Korea after a resident of their state was said to be in a coma after being released from a prison in that country.
Mr. Rodman also has had a relationship with Donald Trump developed while appearing twice, in 2009 and 2013, on the latter's Celebrity Apprentice television show.
Rodman tweeted that his trip is being sponsored by Potcoin, a cyber-currency used to buy and sell marijuana in state-regulated markets, so it seems unlikely that he'll accomplish much in terms of foreign policy. The U.S., which has no trade with the North, can only apply economic pressure on the regime through secondary sanctions that prevent target entities from accessing the lucrative U.S. market.
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