N Korea presents detained American to media

After receiving a debriefing from the State Department

What was he thinking...oh and the church really...see another South park episode coming from this one bring it on....

I find it hard to sympathize with people who travel to these places with crazy leaders, or that are terror targeted hot spots. What do they expect? Here's an idea: don't go to North Korea, period. And if you do go and you get detained/arrested/kidnapped, whatever......don't you and your family sit around and demand that the USA do whatever it takes to get you back. Don't be stupid, people.

Ten years with hard labour---that'll teach him!

"... where he tearfully apologized for attempting to steal a political banner..." so he wouldn't get eaten by dogs immediately, killed by ballistics tests or a flame thrower as a Guinea pig example immediately, or I'mediately accept life in a gulag.

Poor guy, but anyone going to NK voluntarily puts their life on the line. It ain't Disneyland. For anybody. Except maybe Dennis Rodman, but he doesn't count.

So he tried to steal something because someone back home wanted a banner as a souvenir? I really can't understand what was going through his mind

Well, that's what he's been told/allowed/made to say. That doesn't mean it's what happened.

No. But that doesn't really mean anything. Are they going to want to say anything that may cause their boy trouble?

Leave his dumb@ss. We don't want to waste government resources trying to save him.

In his comments, Warmbier said he was offered a used car worth $10,000 by a member of the church. He said the church member told him the slogan would be hung on its wall as a trophy. He also said he was told that if he was detained and not returned, $200,000 would be paid to his mother in a way of charitable donations.

What kind of "church" induces theft and the promise of payment for the act of theft?

It seems from this report Warmbier was promised payment for his theft. Watching his cowering fear and insistence on supplication is a terrible price to pay for a criminal act in a foreign country he chose to visit with the intent to commit crime.

If his church offered to pay him for his crime perhaps they should have the ultimate responsibility for their conspiracy and the punishment of this petty theft.

Why does any American want to go to North Korea in the first place? It looks as though some of these Americans going there do so with the intent of being arrested and imprisoned for their 30 seconds of fame.

I saw the news last night, showing him crying. He looked like a "bad crisis actor," weeping with no tears coming out. The whole thing looked like an act .