North Korea sentenced American student Otto Warmbier to 15 years of hard labor for crimes against the state, China’s state-run Xinhua agency reported Wednesday. The 21-year-old University of Virginia student was arrested for trying to steal a banner from a Pyongyang hotel while visiting in January. Warmbier appeared on state television last month to confess to his “crimes,” noting that a church group asked him to bring back a “trophy.” The sentence comes as tensions have escalated on the Korean Peninusla during the annual joint military exercises by South Korea and the U.S. The UN Security Council recently put down stricter sanctions against the Hermit Kingdom in response to its series of nuclear tests and rocket launches.
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