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This morning, 21-year-old Otto Warmbier is behind bars in North Korea, sentenced to 15 years in a North Korean prison with hard labor.
A visibly shaken Warmbier paraded before cameras, speaking at his trial Wednesday, which only lasted one hour. "I was huge and manipulated. Please save my life," Warmbier said.
Warmbier was found guilty of what the government calls subversion, part of the U.S. hostile policy towards North Korea. In court, they showed this video accusing Warmbier of trying to steal a political banner from an area off limits to foreigners at the hotel where he was staying with the tour group two weeks ago.
Warmbier tearfully spoke at a government-arranged press conference. "I have made the worst mistake of my life," he said.
His family, enlisting the help of former Governor Bill Richardson, the veteran diplomat, met face-to-face with North Korean diplomats Tuesday. "He did a college prank, a mistake, but 15 years to be sentenced, that's crazy," said a family member. Hopefully, now after the sentencing, it'll mean negotiations can start on his release on humanitarian grounds.
Now, those kinds of negotiations have worked in the past. About a dozen American tourists have been arrested there since 2009, all of them eventually released. Hopefully, that will happen again soon.