NORTH KOREA JAILS US TOURIST FOR 15 YEARS HARD LABOR AFTER HE ATTEMPTED TO STEAL A PROPAGANDA BANNER: “Spare a thought for the parents of Otto Warmbier today. Their child is in the hands of the North Korean regime, sentenced to 15 years of hard labour for ‘crimes against the state’. It may well be that Mr Warmbier, a 21-year-old student at the University of Virginia, does not in fact serve that sentence. The North has a habit of bartering back Western prisoners as part of its bizarre diplomatic game with the US. But there’s no certainty of that, and if it does happen, who knows how long they’ll have to wait before their boy is home?… How did their son come to be in this situation? The answer stirs strong emotions too, some of them less generous than the compassion we should all have for the Warmbiers.”

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