United States citizen was detained in North Korea for pro-West material

They said: "We want the world to know how we and our son have been brutalized and terrorized by the pariah regime" in North Korea.

She tells reporters, "we are grateful and thankful" for Warmbier's release, but says it is "too soon" to talk about dialogue between the USA and North Korea.

She says it's an "extremely sad" situation that student Otto Warmbier (WORM'-bir) is in a coma.

The US state department said it had secured his release "at the direction" of President Trump but it then emerged that Mr Warmbier has been in coma for more than a year after contracting botulism - a fate his family learnt about a week ago.

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said Tuesday that his department was continuing "to have discussions" with North Korea about the release of the other three imprisoned American citizens.

North Korea's first private university, PUST was founded and remains operated by actors outside the country, mostly Evangelical Christian organizations.

USA student Otto Warmbier is hospitalized in Cincinnati after he was returned from North Korea. "We are so grateful that he will finally be with people who love him". Two ambulances met the plane on the runway to transfer Otto to the hospital. He did not make it to Hong Kong. He was arrested on January 2, 2016, at Pyongyang Sunan International Airport on the last day of a five-day tour.

Officials worked quietly as reporters and photographers watched from behind a fence.

"During his time in our country, USA citizen Kim Sang Duk attempted to overthrow the state, a hostile crime".

- 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.

North Korea has woefully inadequate medical care, and it is not clear how North Korean doctors had been caring for Warmbier for more than a year in an unconscious state.

Thus, nothing more than a New Year's Eve college prank was elevated to phony charges that Warmbier had committed an act tantamount to trying to overthrow the government.

The 22-year-old University of Virginia student was medically evacuated from North Korea and flown to Cincinnati late Tuesday. On this trip, he has already been roundly criticized by some for visiting during a time of high tensions between the US and North Korea over its weapons programs and recent missile launches.

Three other US citizens are being detained in North Korea, at a time when Kim Jong Un has been firing missiles and threatening to strike the United States. A North Korean official told a USA counterpart that Warmbier had contracted botulism and fell into the coma after taking a sleeping pill, CNN reports.

It is not immediately possible to determine whether Mr. Warmbier's condition is due to events as described by the North Korean government.

Since March previous year, Otto Warmbier was in a coma.

Department of State spokeswoman Heather Nauert told reporters Rodman had nothing to do with Warmbier's release.

He was in North Korea as a tourist with Young Pioneer Tours when he was arrested on 2 January 2016. The release occurred on June 13.

The U.S. announcement that came as former National Basketball Association player Dennis Rodman was paying a return visit to Pyongyang.

Instead, the administration credited the release to its diplomatic intervention.

The 56-year-old NBA Hall of Famer, who was heavily criticized for failing to raise the plight of a jailed U.S. missionary on a previous trip, said discussing detained United States citizens was "not my goal right now".

If it were, there might be pressure on President Trump to take action against Kim Jong-un's regime, he says.

Critics of Trump, meanwhile, also like to point to the eerie echoes of the Kim regime in the USA president's own behavior.