The parents of the American college student who was medically evacuated from North Korea after more than a year in captivity said their son has been “brutalized” by Kim Jong Un’s regime.

“We want the world to know how we and our son have been brutalized and terrorized by the pariah regime” in North Korea, Fred and Cindy Warmbier said in a statement to the Associated Press.

A senior US official said there had been intelligence reports in recent weeks that Otto Warmbier had been repeatedly beaten while in custody, the New York Times reported.

The official, who was not authorized to discuss intelligence and spoke anonymously, said there also had been concerns that the 23-year-old had died as a result of the beatings.

Warmbier was reported to be in a coma while on his way back to the US, where he will be reunited with his parents in Cincinnati.

He was sentenced to 15 years of hard labor in March 2016 after confessing to stealing a propaganda banner from an off-limits area of a hotel.