Umm....people who went on the same Young Pioneer Tours as Otto said it was a drunken free-for-all, nonstop boozefest, and they aren't the only ones--the company's motto is "Budget trips to destinations your mother would rather you stayed away from." People on the tours admit to doing ALL SORTS of things they weren't allowed to, like sneaking onto forbidden, secret floors of their hotel, possibly stealing a towel, smuggling out love letters, and ripping  photos out of their visa. "There was a lot of leeway with what we felt we could get away with in the supposedly 'hermit' kingdom – and in truth most of the time we had a lot of fun feeling like we were flouting the rules and proving the world wrong." And you are telling THEM to "read a book?" How about you "do some research." While what you say about paranoid dictators is correct, in this instance, the guy did it to himself by going to a totalitarian state and intentionally breaking the law by stealing. What did he think would happen?