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A Conservative senator urged Ottawa to do more to help Lim at a press conference at the Light Korean Presbyterian Church west of Toronto on Thursday.

“Time is running out,” Senator Yonah Martin said. “An appeal from our head of state to their head of state, in any form, is very needed. I am just pleading Prime Minister today to consider what intervention he can make.”

She urged Justin Trudeau to make time to meet with representatives of the church and Lim’s family.

Lim was sentenced in late 2015 to life in prison with hard labour by North Korea’s Supreme Court for what it called crimes against the state.

The crimes Lim was charged with included harming the dignity of the supreme leadership, trying to use religion to destroy the North Korean system, disseminating negative propaganda about the North to overseas Koreans and helping U.S. and the South Korean authorities lure and abduct North Korean citizens, along with aiding their programs to assist defectors from the North.

Photo by Anna Steshenko

The call for Canada to take action on Lim’s imprisonment comes days after the unexpected death of a former detainee of the totalitarian regime, Otto Warmbier.

The American student was detained in a North Korean prison for 17 months.

He returned home on June 14 with severe brain damage and in a coma. He unexpectedly passed away on June 19, less than a week after finally reuniting with his family.

The cause of Warmbier’s death is still unknown, but the fact that a prisoner of North Korea did not live long after his release has only increased the agony suffered by the Lim family.