A Utah man who disappeared while hiking through western China in 2004 may have been located in North Korea, and is said to be tutoring the country’s leader, Kim Jong-Un, in English, from a Japanese news agency.
David Sneddon was a 24-year-old college student at Brigham Young University studying Mandarin in China 12 years ago when he vanished in the mountains of Yunnan Province during a solo hike. At the time, the circumstances of his disappearance were unclear, and many thought he had died. But doubts about his death emerged when, in 2011, a former U.S. official called Sneddon’s parents in Utah and told them that their son may have been kidnapped by North Koreans. This week's report raises new questions about what's become of Sneddon.
“These latest developments should be investigated and hopefully our state department will exhaust all of its capabilities to determine whether a U.S. citizen is being held captive by North Korea,” says writer Chris Vogel, who reported a feature on Sneddon’s mysterious disappearance for ϳԹ in 2014. “My best wishes are with the Sneddon family.”
According to the Japanese news report published this week, Sneddon is believed to have a wife and two children in North Korea. Sneddon’s family in Utah has reached out to the news agency for confirmation, .
“We have no proof that it's reliable, to be honest,” David Sneddon’s mother, Kathleen Sneddon, told the Tribune. “We in our hearts think he's alive. We think he's probably teaching English. That's the most likely thing to use him for.”