"He shows no signs of understanding language or responding to verbal commands", neurologist Dr. Daniel Kanter said of 22-year-old Otto Warmbier.
A few hours after his arrival in North Korea, the regime freed American student Otto Warmbier, who had been detained for 17 months in the Asian country and is now in a coma.
Also known as persistent vegetative state, the syndrome's symptoms include no voluntary movement or awareness of surroundings.
Trump called the family last night, Fred Warmbier said. But to the ire of his family and many U.S. citizens, he was found to be in a coma and to have been in that state for some 15 months, triggering heated criticism over Pyongyang's assumed mistreatment of the detainee.
Two other US nationals, both university professors in Pyongyang, were arrested this year for allegedly plotting anti-state acts and remain in custody, he said. Though they could not say with certainty what caused his injuries, they found no evidence to support the botulism claim.
Warmbier was arrested on January 2, 2016, while trying to board a plane out of North Korea.
Kanter said his medical team has no direct contact with the hermit kingdom although they did send medical records, including imaging scans on a disk and blood test results.
Veteran former USA politician and diplomat Bill Richardson offered on Friday to visit North Korea to secure the release of three detained Americans and a Canadian after US university student Otto Warmbier was brought back in a coma.
Otto Warmbier, sentenced to 15 years of hard labor for "anti-state" crimes that amounted to trying to steal a poster from a hotel, learned this lesson the hard way.
Warmbier's parents were told their son was given a sleeping pill soon after his trial in March previous year but never woke up. "He has profound weakness of contraction in his arms and legs".
But, without knowing what caused it, it will be hard for doctors to know for certain what his body has been through. Find us on Facebook too!
A United Nations Special Rapporteur has called for respect for the human rights of detainees in North Korea, after the release of U.S. student Otto Warmbier earlier this week.
He said he and his wife, Cindy, decided this year that the "time for strategic patience was over", and so they did media interviews and traveled to Washington to meet the State Department's special representative for North Korean policy, Joseph Yun.
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According to Kelly Martin, spokeswoman for the UC Health University of Cincinnati Medical Center, "Otto is in stable condition but has suffered a severe neurological injury".
On Thursday, North Korea said that it had released him "on humanitarian grounds".
USA officials have denied the sportsman's visit is an authorised mission, insisting he has travelled to North Korea as a private citizen.
"The fact that he was taken and treated this way is awful, and tough to process", Fred Warmbier said.
When asked whether Obama should have done more to secure his son's release, Warmbier said, "I think the results speak for themselves".
"We are extremely grateful for their efforts and concern", he said of Portman and the Trump administration.
"Dennis Rodman had nothing to do with Otto", he said.
Tourist Danny Gratton met Warmbier in Beijing in late December 2015 on the day they traveled to North Korea for a guided tour of the secretive dictatorship. Shortly after the Swedish visits, the North reached out to the USA with an urgent request to meet in person, officials said.
North Korea is inviting Westerners to visit the isolated country to boost domestic tourism just days after sending one home with severe brain damage.
While there, Yun met with the three other Americans being held, who include two men who taught at a Pyongyang university funded by overseas Christian groups, and a Korean-American pastor accused of espionage for the South.
Three other Americans remain detained in North Korea.
He praised Otto's "adventurous side" and said it was "tough to process" how his son was treated by the North Korean regime.
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