Meet University of Virginia student Otto Frederick Warmbier, the evil mastermind behind the dastardly plan to steal a sign from a Pyongyang hotel.

That’s right, the sincere and heartfelt apology you are watching above is Otto being paraded on national TV for the crime of sign stealing. The folks at NPR say it isn’t clear whether or not he was pressured into making the statement, and whilst I’m no expert at body language I’m inclined to believe he may have had his arm twisted.

One more detail – he has now been detained for over two months, and who knows what goes on behind the scenes when Kim Jong-un and his cronies get their hands on a Yank.

Here’s the background to his crime:

…North Korea believes a member of the Friendship United Methodist Church in Wyoming, Ohio, promised Warmbier, who’s from Ohio, a used car worth $10,000 in exchange for retrieving a slogan-bearing sign from the communist state.

That official also [says] that North Korea believes that Warmbier approached the sign in the middle of the night in an attempt to take it — but that it was larger than he had anticipated, and he was forced to leave it on the floor.

In addition to the church in Ohio, North Korea is accusing Warmbier of acting with two other groups in mind — the CIA and the Z Society, which…is a “semi-secret” group that carries out philanthropic activities and awards academic prizes.

I don’t want to implicate anyone in any past crimes but surely at some point you’ve nicked a number plate or a street sign, we all have. Now imagine it ended with the world’s leading case of short man syndrome trotting you out in front of the entire country and forcing you to issue an apology.

I also just crossed North Korea off my bucket list.

[source:npr]