“An American university student who was returned to the United States this week after being held in North Korea for 17 months has a severe brain injury and is in a state of ‘unresponsive wakefulness’,” doctors told Reuters yesterday. Specifically, Otto Warmbier, a 22-year-old student of the University of Virginia, was returned to America and is now a patient at the University of Cincinnati Medical Center, where he shows no understanding of any communication around him. Given the limited amount of information provided by Kim Jong Un’s Korean military, the exact cause of Warmbier’s comatose state is not known. However, one of the top assumptions is that his condition is the result of a traumatic brain injury.
Warmbier, originally from Wyoming, Ohio, has been in a coma for more than a year, shortly after he was sentenced to 15 years of hard labor for stealing a propaganda sign in North Korea, where he was a tourist. (I assume that Warmbier stole the sign as a unique type of memorabilia, so he would always remember his once-in-a-lifetime trip.)
This week, the Warmbier family received a call from President Trump, which they termed “kind” of him. On Wednesday, Secretary of State Tillerson said that America is now considering travel visa restrictions for North Korea. (Before all of this, last month, a bill was introduced that would ban United States citizens from traveling to North Korea.) The United Nations human rights division is also carrying out a thorough investigation into North Korea’s actions.
