A 21-year old U.S. student has been sentenced to an incredibly harsh 15 years of prison and hard labor, following what seems to be a prank gone terribly wrong. University of Virginia student Otto Warmbier was taking a tourist trip around North Korea’s capital, Pyongyang, and was arrested at the city’s airport in early Janurary when trying to depart.
In a public appearance a few weeks ago, Warmbier said he was accused of stealing a propaganda poster from his hotel room to take back home in Ohio. NPR reports that Warmbier’s offense was kept a secret for several weeks until recently, when he gave a bizarre confession involving stealing the poster in order to get money for his family and gain entry into a secret UVA group. In the confession, Warmbier was repentant, calling the offense “the worst mistake of my life.”
Phil Robertson, Asia director for Human Rights Watch said in a statement, “Pyongyang should recognize this student’s self-admitted mistake as the misdemeanor offense that it would be in most countries, release him on humanitarian grounds and send him home.”
The timing of North Korea’s public sentencing is also suspicious. It came as the United States was looking to punish North Korea after it conducted its fourth nuclear test and long-range rocket launch.