An American student visiting North Korea as part of a trip organized by a Chinese tour company has been sentenced to 15 years of hard labor for taking down a North Korean propaganda poster from the hotel at which he was staying. CNN first reported the story on Wednesday. Otto Frederick Warmbier, 21, was arrested on January 2 just as he was about to take a flight out of the country. The University of Virginia student was accused of allegedly “taking down a political slogan” from the Yanggakdo International Hotel in North Korea’s capital of Pyongyang.
North Korea has sentenced U.S. college student Otto Warmbier to 15 years of hard labor https://t.co/fLJ3WKGfHd pic.twitter.com/xjPBFrAbRr
— Wall Street Journal (@WSJ) March 16, 2016
Likely under extreme duress, Wambier “confessed” to his supposed “crime.” “I committed the crime of taking down a political slogan from the staff holding area of the Yanggakdo International Hotel,” said Wambier, reading from for a pre-scripted statement. “I never, never should have allowed myself to be lured by the United States administration to commit a crime in this country.” He added:
I wish that the United States administration never manipulate people like myself in the future to commit crimes against foreign countries. I entirely beg you, the people and government of the DPRK, for your forgiveness. Please! I made the worst mistake of my life!
Heavily peppered with hyperbolic adjectives and adverbs, the statement sounded as if had been written by a North Korean propagandist who had just received an online certificate from an unaccredited ESL course. The isolated country, prone to paranoia, likely forced Wambier to parrot the fictitious narrative of being “lured by the United States administration to commit a crime” in North Korea. In fact, the state officials qualified Wambier’s “confession” with more bizarre conspiracy theories. “The North Korean government alleges Warmbier was encouraged to commit the “hostile act” by a purported member of an Ohio church, a secretive university organization and even the CIA,” reports CNN.
This isn’t the first time an American has been detained under trumped-up charges after being accused of committing a “hostile act.” “Kenneth Bae and Matthew Miller are the most recent American detainees who have been released by North Korea,” adds CNN. “Both were accused of perpetrating ‘hostile acts’ against North Korea; Miller spent less than a year in custody after being sentenced to six years hard labor, and Bae, facing a 15-year sentence, was held for nearly two years.”
The cult mindset inside the hermit kingdom considers “political slogans” and state propaganda messaging tantamount to religious iconography. In order to maintain totalitarian control, the North Korean regime has marked the sacred cows of crappy pro-government posters as untouchable, even holy. In their eyes, Wambier is not just a criminal, but a heretic deserving of extreme punishment.
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