WASHINGTON—North Korea has released Otto Warmbier, a U.S. university student held captive there for 17 months, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said on Tuesday.
Warmbier, 22, a University of Virginia student from suburban Cincinnati, was on his way back to the United States, Tillerson said in a statement.
The Washington Post cited Warmbier’s parents as saying he had been medically evacuated from North Korea in a coma.
“Our son is coming home,” Fred Warmbier told the newspaper on Tuesday. “At the moment, we’re just treating this like he’s been in an accident. We get to see our son Otto tonight.”
Tillerson, at a Senate hearing on Tuesday, declined to comment on Warmbier’s condition. A person who answered the phone at Warmbier’s family’s Ohio residence said: “No comment, thank you” and hung up.
