Dad of US student thrown in North Korean labour camp for 15 years breaks silence to plead with Donald Trump for help

THE dad of a US student imprisoned in a North Korean labour camp has pleaded with Donald Trump to help free his son. 

Fred Warmbier broke his long silence to make a direct appeal to the US President ahead of any possible military strikes on the rogue state.

“President Trump, I ask you, bring my son home,” Fred Warmbier told Fox News, in the first public remarks he has made since his son was detained more than a year ago.

Otto Warmbier was arrested in January 2016 while he was on a tour of North Korea.

The Warmbiers said to date neither the Obama administration nor the Trump administration has given them reason to hope their son will be released anytime soon.

Instead, they said they'd been told to keep quiet about the situation.

At the time of his arrest, North Korean officials accused Otto, a graduate of Wyoming High School, of committing a "hostile act" against the country.

In March 2016, the government sentenced him to 15 years hard labour for allegedly trying to steal a political banner.

The Warmbiers said they met with former secretary of State John Kerry last year, but he gave them no indication of progress in their son’s case.

Kerry seemed “exasperated and overwhelmed with North Korea,” Fred Warmbier told Fox news host Tucker Carlson.

“No one’s reached out to us,” he said.

“I would have hoped that somebody other than the desk person (at the State Department) … would have reached out and maybe given us some reassurances. But that doesn’t happen in our world.”

Otto’s mother, Cindy Warmbier, said State Department officials seemed to blame her and her husband for letting their son travel to North Korea in the first place.

"They acted like we were ignorant basically for letting him go,” she said.

“And they asked us to stay quiet because they said it’s better for everyone involved.”

Mr Warmbier said he hoped Trump's secretary of State, Rex Tillerson, would be in a better position to help them than Kerry was.

“I’d like to work with him to bring Otto home," he said. ";He can make a difference here. He’s a doer."

Otto said he wanted to take the banner home for a woman in Ohio who wanted to hang it in her church.

Now his ongoing detention is seen  by some in Washington as having political motives ahead of possible sanctions being enforced to bring an end to more nuclear weapons being developed in Kim's kingdom.