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Medical staff wait for the return of university student Otto Warmbier at Lunken Airport in Cincinnati

It turns out that US and North Korean government officials had been secretly working behind the scenes since last month for the release of American university student Otto Warmbier, 22, who had been detained in North Korea for about 17 months.

The interaction between North Korean and American officials goes back to the 1.5 track dialogue (talks between figures from the government and the private sector) that took place in Oslo, Norway, on May 8 and 9. The only North Korean official known to have attended the talks was Choe Son-hui, chief of the North Korean Foreign Ministry’s North America bureau, while reports indicated that the only Americans in attendance were experts in the private sector including Suzanne DiMaggio, a Senior Fellow at the New America Foundation, and Robert Einhorn, a former US State Department special advisor for nonproliferation and arms control.

But it was confirmed that Joseph Yun, the chief US envoy to the Six-Party Talks, had also attended the 1.5 track dialogue. Yun is the Special Representative for North Korea Policy and the Deputy Assistant Secretary for Korea and Japan in the Bureau of East Asian and Pacific Affairs. The meeting was also reportedly joined by Pak Song-il, the ambassador for American affairs at North Korea’s delegation to the UN. This made the meeting the first example of exploratory dialogue between the governments of the US and North Korea since Donald Trump became president.

While in Oslo, Yun and the North Korean officials agreed that the Swedish government would be allowed to provide consular visits to Warmbier and the other three Americans who are detained in North Korea, the Washington Post reported. But the Swedish consulate was only able to meet one of the detainees, and that person was reportedly not Warmbier.

After the American government requested meetings with all four detainees, Pak Song-il arranged an urgent meeting with Joseph Yun in New York on June 6. It was during this meeting that the North Koreans explained that Warmbier was in a coma.

Yun reported the situation to US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, who discussed the issue with President Trump. Trump instructed Yun to prepare to visit North Korea to secure Warmbier’s release, to ask for an interview with Warmbier, and in the event that Warmbier was in bad health, to request his immediate release. In keeping with these instructions, Yun arrived in Pyongyang with two doctors on the morning of June 12 and returned to the US with Warmbier the next day.

By Yi Yong-in, Washington correspondent

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