It appears that we have another episode developing in the epidemic of anti-American dictatorships kidnapping our citizens. The Iranians have basically elevated extorting the Obama administration for the return of American citizens into an art form, and then Iraq followed suit last week, so why shouldn’t North Korea get in on this action? FoxNews reports:

North Korea said Friday that it had arrested a University of Virginia student for allegedly committing “anti-state” acts orchestrated by the U.S. government.

In language that mirrors past North Korean claims of outside conspiracies, state media claimed Otto Frederick Warmbier entered the North as a tourist with a plot to undermine unity among the North Koreans with “the tacit connivance of the U.S. government and under its manipulation.”

The report from the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said Warmbier was “arrested while perpetrating a hostile act,” but didn’t say when he was detained or explain the nature of the act.

One of the things that used to be neat about being an American citizen is that you could travel abroad relatively secure in the knowledge that the tinpot dictators of the third world hellholes of planet Earth would almost certainly not mess with you because messing with American citizens was contraindicated to their long term survival.

That appears to no longer be part of the calculus for the anti-American dictators of the world. I wonder why?