21-year-old Otto Frederick Warmbier was accused of subversion by stealing a propaganda sign from the hotel he was staying at in North Korea.

Warmbier was traveling with a Chinese tour group at the time; the group is called Young Pioneer Tours, whose websites says they are “budget tours to destinations your mother would rather you stayed away from”.

There is speculation about the reason for Warmbier’s action of taking the banner.  

He was sentenced to 15 years of hard labor in North Korea; however, the U.S. State Department is butting in and saying that the sentence doesn’t fit the alleged crime.  They have said that the punishment is “unduly harsh” and the United States is urging North Korea “to pardon him and to grant him special amnesty and immediate release on humanitarian grounds.”

Warmbier pleaded guilty and spoke out saying “I have made the worst mistake of my life.”  

Ohio Governor, John Kasich, a Republican candidate for president, has spoken out saying that North Korea is completely unjustified and is making efforts to try to release him.  

Other U.S. citizens who have been sentenced to labor camps in North Korea before have been released much earlier than their sentence indicated.  American journalist Euna Lee recalls her time in a North Korean labor camp, she was sentenced to 12 years and served 140 days only.  She said in an interview that she was actually sent to a prison cell instead of a camp and she was lucky with her experience, and that “if Warmbier goes to the labor camp, that might be a slightly different story”.