Tweet of the Day: Activist Says US Student Kidnapped and Alive In North Korea
U.S. student David Sneddon alive in North Korea, activist says https://t.co/OQABEREwuN
— Elizabeth Shim (@GlobalAsianista) February 7, 2017
U.S. student David Sneddon alive in North Korea, activist says https://t.co/OQABEREwuN
— Elizabeth Shim (@GlobalAsianista) February 7, 2017
Two countries you should stay away from: North Korea and China.
Why I hate Tweets: Headlines, and nothing else. Did a little research, came across this article with a bit more information:
http://heavy.com/news/2016/09/david-sneddon-found-missing-north-korea-kim-jong-un-brigham-young-student-parents-kathleen/
Mormon kid from BYU, went to China to teach English. Speaks English, Mandarin Chinese and Korean fluently. Went hiking at Tiger Leaping Gorge, vanished, leaving his backpack behind. No one used his bank account or airline ticket. Eyewitnesses placed him ~70 miles from the Gorge AFTER he completed his hike. Chinese authorities had assumed he had fallen in and drowned.
Witnesses have spotted him in Pyongyang, North Korea, where he teaches English. He is married, and has two kids.
One of the few times it’s not “Guy goes to North Korea, acts the fool, gets in trouble and begs the US to come fetch him.”
Heavy dot com has scripts, which bog down my work computer, so here is a different article from 1 Sep 2016:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3769044/Vanished-student-David-Sneddon-kidnapped-Kim-Jong-lives-North-Korea-wife-kids.html
@20 I don’t see why the Kim regime would abduct someone that far south and remote within China considering how difficult the logistics would be to bring him back to North Korea undetected. It seems they would focus on grabbing someone from the Manchuria region of China that would be easier to slip across the border with.
Also reports claim that he is married to a North Korean woman. This is something else I am suspicious of because past abductees were not allowed to marry Korean women because they would spoil the North Korean blood line which they put a lot of value in. That is why Charles Jenkins was allowed to marry a Japanese abductee and James Dresnkok married an abducted Romanian woman.
GI Korea, North Koreans have grabbed foreign people in the past in places far down south like Hong Kong. The most famous were the South Korean movie director Shin Sang-Ok and his movie star wife who were kidnapped in Hong Kong. They managed to escape from North Korea in 1986, and brought with them a voice recording of Kim Jong Il admitting to their kidnapping. It’s easy for North Koreans kidnap people in China because they have many of their operatives operating in China looking for North Korean defectors or assassinating/kidnapping South Koreans aiding North Koreans.
A Mormon out of US jurisdiction and only one wife?
Story stinks.
@Tyson, the difference with the kidnapping of Shin Sang-ok is that it was a planned operation by Kim Jong-il. Plus Hong Kong is a port city where they can quickly grab someone and throw them in a boat like they have done with other abductees from other countries.
In Sneddon’s case why would the North Koreans plan an operation to grab him? What made him be in the cross hairs of the Kim regime? If they needed someone to teach English to Kim Jong-un they could have easily grabbed someone in the border region and not go to a remote area in southern China and grab a random hiker and then have to transport him a long distance undetected by vehicle back to North Korea.