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Comment by alexhutcheson | Hacker News Reader

It's hard for me to understand why someone would want to go after reading about the case of Otto Warmbier[1]. There are plenty of interesting and exciting places to visit in the world that don't put you at the mercy of DPRK officials and their reaction to geopolitical events.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Otto_Warmbier

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Is it also hard for you to understand why someone would go to the US after reading about the case of Eric Garner[1]? There are plenty of interesting and exciting places to visit in the world that don't put you at the mercy of police officers and their reaction to selling cigarettes.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Eric_Garner

Orders of magnitude apples and oranges here. Only a couple thousand westerners go to north korea a year. Compared to the 35 million people who smoke in the US and live to see another cigarette, I'd say you have better odds visiting the US.

Not that I condone traveling to North Korea, but Otto is almost definitely the example of "don't do something dumb" the op was thinking of.

>The tour group celebrated New Year's Eve by carousing in Pyongyang's Kim Il-sung Square before returning to their accommodations at the Yanggakdo International Hotel, where they continued drinking alcohol. Early in the morning of New Year's Day, Warmbier allegedly tried to steal a propaganda poster from a staff-only area of the hotel.

He stole a poster. [1] In North Korea. It was young and stupid and he shouldn't died for it, but he did break a law while he was over there.

[1] https://globalnews.ca/video/3544639/video-appearing-to-show-...

> don't do something dumb > he stole a poster

How are we certain that he did in fact steal the poster? For all we know he could have been entirely innocent and any other tourist could have been arrested and tortured for forged reasons too.

Well in this case there is a video.

It’s not clear in the video that it was him

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