Pretty crazy to see people here justifying this ridiculous sentence for something that may not have even been done on purpose. What is wrong with some of you?
Seriously. It feels like some of the commenters here are from the DPRK itself. Do you really trust what the North Koreans are saying? He could've just been a kid who wanted a souvenir and now he's going to an internment camp for 15 years. Poor guy :-(
We're not going to really know what happened there until he's out. But the question did remind me of an old Polish movie ending in a scene where a guy tries to fix a broken flag and the police stops him for breaking it. (https://youtu.be/34OcRxapLY0?t=10m10s "citizen, are you taking down national flag? papers please") NK publishes a lot of lies. Let's not rely on them for judging people.