Vacation is a wonderful sometimes horrible thing. It is nice to visit the family or get away for a while or if you are fortunate enough to travel someplace new and exciting. People save up to go to a dream destination and sometimes you get a fantastic adventures and other times? Not so much. The show Locked Up Abroad is a cautionary tale. Otto Warmbier went to North Korea for vacation and is now facing 15 years in prison for being an American in the worst place at the worst possible time.  As CNBC reports:

North Korea’s highest court sentenced an American tourist to 15 years in prison with hard labor on Wednesday for subversion. He allegedly attempted to steal a propaganda banner from a restricted area of his hotel at the request of an acquaintance who wanted to hang it in her church. Otto Warmbier, a 21-year-old University of Virginia undergraduate student, was convicted and sentenced in a one-hour trial at the North’s Supreme Court. He was charged with subversion.

The story like anything else emitting from that foul pestilent country is sketchy at best and most likely is a whole lot of lies. The illogical so-called “confession raises more questions than answers.  And it does not help that John Kerry is worse than useless (although James Taylor may be sent to serenade the North Koreans)

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 didn’t return, $200,000 would be paid to his mother in the form of a charitable donation. Warmbier, from Wyoming, Ohio, said he accepted the offer of money because his family is “suffering from very severe financial difficulties.”

Really? The tour itself is about $2,000 plus cost of the plane ticket to and from Beijing, cost of hotels and other tourist related costs. And had no money to do this? And a random passing church member asked the boy to violate the eighth commandment and the kid then spent several thousand dollars to take a vacation to do this? Really? Only in the delusional mind of the North Korean government could this scenario occur.

For those of you making vacation plans, the US State Department says this about North Korea:

The Department of State strongly recommends against all travel by U.S. citizens to North Korea (Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, or DPRK). This replaces the Travel Warning for North Korea of April 15, 2015, to reiterate and highlight the risk of arrest and long-term detention due to the DPRK’s inconsistent application of its criminal laws.

Not my idea of a vacation destination. And when (not if but when) a naïve American gets arrested the State Department can swoop in easily, right? Um no.

Since the United States does not maintain diplomatic or consular relations with the DPRK, the U.S. government has no means to provide normal consular services to U.S. citizens in North Korea. The Embassy of Sweden, the U.S. Protecting Power in the DPRK capital of Pyongyang, provides limited consular services to U.S. citizens traveling in North Korea who are ill, injured, arrested, or who have died while there. The U.S.-DPRK Interim Consular Agreement provides that North Korea will notify the Embassy of Sweden within four days of an arrest or detention of a U.S. citizen and will allow consular visits by the Swedish Embassy within two days after a request is made. However, the DPRK government routinely delays or denies consular access.

So the takeaway:  Timing was bad, location was worse and all in all this was a trip gone horribly wrong as CNBC said.  Research before traveling is a very good idea.