US coroner investigating death of student freed from North Korea

Secretary Tillerson said in a statement that the USA holds North Korea accountable for Warmbier's "unjust imprisonment".

North Korea returned Warmbier, who has reportedly been in a coma for a year, to the US last week, stating that they were acting on humanitarian grounds.

The Ohio coroner examining the death of a University of Virginia student who was held prisoner in North Korea for 17 months expects to share preliminary findings of the autopsy on Tuesday or Wednesday, her office said.

"The treatment of Otto Warmbier is beyond the pale of North Korea's usual standards", said John Delury, an Asia expert at Seoul's Yonsei University.

"It's a total disgrace what happened to Otto". They said it should be a "call to action to those in the position to protect our American citizens here at home AND overseas".

Warmbier was medically evacuated to the United States on Tuesday last week, suffering from severe brain damage.

Wambier's parents did not cite a specific cause of death but blamed "awful, torturous mistreatment" by North Korea.

But he firmly rejected two statements issued last week by Tomas Ojea-Quintana, the United Nations special rapporteur on human rights in North Korea, about detainees and stalled family reunions between Koreans on both sides of the divided peninsula.

"North Korea is probably one of the safest places on earth to visit ...", the company says on its website. "The devastating loss of Otto Warmbier's life has led us to reconsider our position on accepting American tourists".

South Korean President Moon Jae-in says North Korea must bear "heavy responsibility" for the death of a 22-year-old US college student it detained for almost a year and a half.

"Working with such a country, we must achieve the goal of the complete dismantlement of North Korea's nuclear program", Moon said. Using Beijing to punish individual, prominent North Koreans officials would be a better strategy than trying to censure them without China's involvement.

"Considering these facts and this tragic outcome we will no longer be organizing tours for U.S. citizens to North Korea".

Fred Warmbier, father of Otto Warmbier, during a news conference in Cincinnati, Ohio on June 15, 2017.

He was sentenced in March 2016 to 15 years in prison with hard labor.

Warmbier had planned to study in China in his third year of college and heard about Chinese travel companies offering trips to North Korea.

"The way his detention was handled was appalling and a tragedy like this must never be repeated", it said in a statement.

Trump had made clear in the past that his preference was to work with China on North Korea, but that he was willing to go after them alone.

Sen. Bob Corker of Tennessee, the Republican chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, said the USA should think about banning US citizens from visiting North Korea. He said he was kept isolated most of the time but not physically abused.

Think not only of the roughly 30,000 American troops stationed in South Korea, or of the tens of thousands of other Americans living in the country, within range of North Korean conventional artillery.

The statement released via the state's mouthpiece Rodong Sinmun said: "The US's persistent sanctions and military pressure will only precipitate its miserable end".