Reductio ad Absurdum of the World. m/r
North Korea, the Ultimate Tourist Trap | PJ Media
by Claudia Rosett March 17, 2016
For the alleged offense of trying to steal a propaganda poster from a Pyongyang hotel, North Korea has now imposed a sentence of 15 years of prison and hard labor on a visiting American college student, Otto Frederick Warmbier. The U.S. State Department, in a classic piece of diplomatic understatement, has called this sentence "unduly harsh," and repeated its warning against travel to North Korea.
No doubt it was foolish of Warmbier to go to North Korea at all. It was doubly foolish if, indeed, the 21-year-old Warmbier while visiting North Korea tried to filch one of the ubiquitous propaganda posters -- which North Korea's people are required, by their tyrant, to treat as sacred writ. The civilized world still awaits the day when all such North Korean propaganda will be torn down wholesale, and dumped where it belongs -- in that vast Ozymandias trashpit of history's discarded lies.
But the real foolishness here has almost nothing to do with Otto Warmbier. It has everything to do with a U.S. policy that has repeatedly rewarded North Korea for this hostage racket. There is by now a ritual to such proceedings. An American citizen trespasses onto North Korean turf, or arrives with a tour group and commits a transgression against Pyongyang's totalitarian rules. North Korea turns these people into propaganda pawns and international bargaining chips, imposing absurd sentences and effectively demanding high-profile ransom -- typically in the form of a prominent figure who travels to North Korea to petition for their release.
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