Contrary to North Korean claims, doctors treating Otto Warmbier have said the 22-year-old's coma was induced by respiratory arrest and a lack of oxygen in the brain. Warmbier was released from a Korean prison on Tuesday.
Image: picture alliance/AP/J. Chol Jin
Advertisement
Doctors treating an American college student released from a North Korean prison this week have disputed the reclusive state's story over what caused him to fall into a coma.
Otto Warmbier, who was imprisoned for 17 months in North Korea, had suffered extensive tissue loss in all regions of the brain, Dr. Daniel Kanter, director of the neuroscience intensive care unit at the University of Cincinnati Medical Center, said on Thursday. The injury is thought to have been caused by respiratory arrest cutting blood supply to the brain, although doctors said they are unaware what might have caused it.
That refuted claims made by North Korea that Warmbier had fallen into a coma after contracting botulism, a rare, serious illness caused by contaminated food or a dirty wound, and being given a sleeping pill. Kanter said there was no sign of botulism in Warmbier's system.
Confession in North Korea
02:01
This browser does not support the video element.
The 22-year-old University of Virginia student was flown back to the United States on Tuesday following a rare diplomatic intervention by the US State Department in the reclusive state.
Speaking to reporters, Kanter declined to give specific details on the 22-year-old student's prognosis at the family's request, stating only that his condition was stable but that he "shows no sign of understanding language, responding to verbal commands or awareness of his surrounding."
Family fury at North Korea regime
The student's father, Fred Warmbier, said he had only been made aware of his son's condition a week ago.
"I don't know what being in shock is, but I'm pretty sure I was," he said. "Even if you believe their explanation of botulism and a sleeping pill causing the coma - and we don't - there is no excuse for any civilized nation to have kept his condition secret and denied him top-notch medical care for so long."
Otto Warmbier was seen being carried off a plane in Cincinnati after being evacuated from North KoreaImage: picture alliance/The Cincinnati Enquirer/AP/S. Greene
Speaking at Otto's old high school in Wyoming on Thursday, Fred Warmbier called his son "a fighter" and said the family feels "relief that Otto is now home in the arms of those who love him and anger that he was so brutally treated for so long."
Fred Warmbier also revealed that the family received a "very nice phone call" from US President Donald Trump on Wednesday, who reportedly told him that Secretary of State Rex Tillerson had worked tirelessly to secure Otto's release. The family said it was "extremely grateful for their efforts and concern."
North Korea in pictures: a rare glimpse into the isolated country
A team of journalists explored North Korea for a week, accompanied by officials who monitored the images and ensured not a single citizen was interviewed. The secluded country opened up and revealed itself.
The reporters from AP covered over 2,150 kilometers (1,336 miles), in a country of barely 25,000 kilometers of roads, merely 724 of those paved. They came back with only their photos as evidence of the life in the northern part of the secluded country. In the picture: A woman walks along a road southeast of Pyongyang in North Korea's North Hwanghae province.
A North Korean man sits by a cooking fire he built to roast potatoes and chicken in the town of Samjiyon, in Ryanggang province. Possibly more than any other populated place on earth, North Korea is terra incognita, but the AP team was granted access to see North Korea and travel through places that, they were told, no foreign journalist and few foreigners had been allowed to see before.
A boulder lies on a path near the peak of Mount Paektu in North Korea's Ryanggang province. North Koreans venerate Mount Paektu for its natural beauty, but more importantly because it is considered the home of the North Korean revolution. They also consider the mountain sacred as the place of their ancestral origin.
Farmers walk in a rainstorm with their cattle near the town of Hyesan, North Korea in Ryanggang province. "To get out of Pyongyang, we weaved our way around buses, streetcars, the black sedans of party officials and fleets of colorful new taxis that have over the past few years become commonplace," says Eric Talmadge, one of the jourmalists who participated in the journey.
Young North Korean schoolchildren help to fix pot holes in a rural road in North Korea's North Hamgyong province. The country's best road is the 200-kilometer stretch of highway connecting the capital to the east coast port city of Wonsan. Beyond Wonsan, potholes, cracks or sudden patches of dirt road make travel a bumpy experience.
North Korean residents walk on along a river in the town of Kimchaek, in North Korea's North Hamgyong province. The once-productive cities along its east coast, like the coal mining town of Kilju and the nearby city of Kimchaek - built around a sprawling but now eerily quiet ironworks complex - have become a rust belt, gritty and relentlessly gray.
The remains of lunch left on a restaurant table in the city of Wonsan, North Korea. The government "minders" accompanied the journalists throughout the entire trip. Like foreign tourists, the AP team only saw a bare trace of the deprivation residents experience. Most of the country's citizens cannot afford proper housing, let alone a visit to a restaurant.
The journalists' itineary was dictated by North Korea's terms. There would be no stopping to interview random people. "It's quite possible none of them had ever seen an American before," said AP's Eric Talmadge, "but our presence went unacknowledged. No glances were exchanged. No words were spoken." Here boys are playing soccer in the town of Hyesan, in the northern Ryanggang province.
North Korean men share a picnic lunch and North Korean-brewed and bottled Taedonggang beer along the road in North Korea's North Hwanghae province. This year, according to United Nations experts, the country could come closer to feeding itself than it has in decades. But hunger remains a serious problem, with a third of North Korean children stunted in growth due to poor nutrition.
A farmer carries a fully grown cabbage after harvesting it from the main crop which will be harvested early November, on the outskirts of Pyongyang. About four-fifths of North Korea's land is too rugged to farm. Providing enough food to feed the nation is a struggle for North Korea, which suffered a near cataclysmic famine in the 1990s.
Image: picture-alliance/AP Photo/Wong Maye-E
No detour allowed
A man works on his car as others sit next to the Wonsan Sea in North Korea. For the most part, AP's reporters were not allowed to detour from their pre-approved route, which, to no one's surprise, did not include nuclear facilities or prison camps.
A group of young North Koreans enjoys a picnic on the beach in Wonsan. "Even on the loneliest of lonely highways, we would never be without a 'minder,' whose job was to monitor and supervise our activities," Talmadge explains. "We were not to take photographs of any checkpoints or military installations."
North Korean people rest next to the railroad tracks in a town in North Korea's North Hamgyong province. "Though we would not get to know the people along the way, the country itself had a great deal to say. And it was opening up before us," Talmadge said upon his return. "We had been granted unprecedented access."