The case of David Sneddon resurfaced on Reddit this week. It did not take long for people who knew him personally to raise their voices.
"David was my brother's best friend growing up," one Reddit user wrote. "He came to our house and stayed with us right before this trip. He spent a lot of time at a restaurant run by Koreans, ate there and practiced his Korean for several days. We believe they were Korean spies and he was abducted for his fluency."
The same user said an escaped North Korean detainee had also claimed to have seen Sneddon inside the country and that he had been forced to marry a Korean woman and father a child. These details, as it turns out, match separate reports that all make the same claims.
Others pushed back on certain aspects of the incident. "Kim already knows English," one commenter noted. "He lived in Switzerland for college." That part is accurate (Kim Jong Un attended school in Bern under a pseudonym) but analysts say that North Korea historically abducts foreigners for purposes including rewarding officials.
The renewed attention thus drew more eyes to a case that began more than two decades ago and has not been officially solved.
@feathergirl77 Another episode of The Last Trip is coming tomorrow! David Sneddon was a 24 year old from Utah who was hiking in China when he vanished. Chinese authorities said he drowned…but 7 years later a former Pentagon official called his family with new information. Did North Korea kidnap David? And is he still being held there?? Listen to The Last Trip wherever you get your podcasts! . . #northkorea #china #tigerleapinggorge #hiking #missing #utah #vanished #missingperson #mormon #disappeared #thelasttrip #vacationtiktok #vacation #traveltok #travellife #travel
♬ original sound - Jaimie Beebe
David Sneddon was 24 years old when he vanished during a solo backpacking trip through one of southern China's most dramatic landscapes. He had just completed a summer language course in Beijing. But his missing-persons case has since involved the inner circles of Pyongyang.
Sneddon was a Brigham Young University student from Providence, Utah. He was last seen Aug. 14, 2004, at a Korean-owned cafe in Shangri-La, in China's Yunnan Province near the Myanmar border. According to Newsweek, he had just finished hiking through Tiger Leaping Gorge and told the cafe owner he would collect his bags before continuing his journey. No confirmed sightings were reported afterward.
Chinese authorities closed the case and ruled that Sneddon had probably drowned in the Jinsha River, which goes through the gorge. His family rejected that explanation, and his body was never recovered. Weeks later, his father, Roy Sneddon, and two of his brothers started retracing David's steps and encountered multiple locals who recalled meeting him.
A tour guide even said he had walked the entire gorge with Sneddon and seen him reach a youth hostel at the far end. Roy Sneddon told Fox News that, the hiking trail ran more than a mile from the river. So an accidental drowning was a difficult explanation to accept.
For years, the family kept searching for another answer. Then, in August 2016, South Korea's Abductees' Family Union announced that its sources in Pyongyang had informed the organization that Sneddon was alive and living under the name Yoon Bong Soo. Reportedly, he was also working as an English teacher in North Korea's capital.
The group's head, Choi Sung-yong, told Yahoo News Japan that Sneddon had likely been taken by North Korean agents to serve as an English tutor for students, including Kim Jong Un. Kim Jong Un was also college-age in 2004. Local South Korean news reports also identified one Kim Eun Hye as Sneddon's wife and that the couple had two children.
Was Utah student David Sneddon, presumed dead in 2004, kidnapped by North Korea? https://t.co/YX8H2ZeuOr pic.twitter.com/UUOKzW6ee2
— FOX61 (@FOX61News) September 3, 2016
As the U.S. House of Representatives have noted, North Korea acknowledged in 2002 that it had been abducting foreign citizens since the 1970s to train its intelligence and military in language and culture.
American soldier Charles Robert Jenkins (who defected in 1965 and spent nearly 40 years in North Korea) left the country in July 2004, or one month before Sneddon disappeared. Jenkins said he had been forced to teach English to North Korean personnel during the years he was held.
Sneddon, too, was fluent in Korean after two years as a missionary in South Korea and was studying Mandarin at BYU. Yunnan Province, where he vanished, is also known as a corridor for North Korean defectors who flee toward Thailand and Laos. North Korean operatives were known to work the region, reportedly with Beijing's knowledge.
As of the time of writing, the State Department found no verifiable evidence of an abduction and North Korea has denied any involvement. The case remains open.
