Tag: abductions

Did North Korea Kidnap American Hiker Missing In China?

| September 4, 2016

It seems to me North Korea abducting an American from Yunnan province seems pretty far fetched considering the large distance the province is from North Korea.  It would have been far easier for them to abduct someone from a Chinese province bordering China if they were looking for an American to kidnap:

A US student who supposedly died in China in 2004 has reportedly turned up alive in North Korea after being kidnapped to serve as Kim Jong Un’s personal tutor.

David Sneddon of Brigham Young University disappeared in Yunnan Province aged 24, in what Chinese police said was probably a hiking accident.

But the reality, according to Choi Sung-yong, head of South Korea’s Abductees’ Family Union, is that he was kidnapped to be an English tutor to the then-heir to North Korea Yahoo News Japan reported Wednesday.

Sneddon is now living in the North Korean capital of Pyongyang, where he teaches English to children and has a wife and two children, Choi said.

The news comes as relief – but little surprise – to Sneddon’s parents, Roy and Kathleen, who have long doubted the official story of their son’s disappearance.

‘We just knew in our heart that he was alive, so we had to keep fighting,’ said Kathleen Sneddon.

Their suspicion was based in part on the fact that Sneddon’s body was never found after he was believed to have died in Tiger Leaping Gorge, a canyon on Yunnan’s Jinsha River that is highly popular with tourists.  [Daily Mail via a reader link]

You can read more at the link, but other than a statement from a North Korean defector there is no evidence to support the claim in the article.  It seems the family is maintaining a healthy bit of skepticism as well about the claim.

North Korea Reneges On Report On Japanese Abductions

| September 28, 2014

North Korea has decided to play the delay game in regards to the report on abductions they promised to deliver to the Japanese:

North Korea will not announce the preliminary report on its probe into the fate of more than a dozen Japanese nationals it has admitted to kidnapping decades ago when it holds a new round of talks with Japan next week, an envoy from the communist country said Saturday.

Song Il-ho, the North Korean ambassador for normalization talks with Japan, made the remarks as he arrived in China’s northern city of Shenyang earlier in the day for talks with Junichi Ihara, head of the Japanese foreign ministry’s Asian and Oceanian Affairs Bureau.

The Monday talks between Song and Ihara come after North Korea failed to produce its first report on its probe into the abduction issue, causing Japan to complain about the slow pace of the investigation. In May, Pyongyang agreed to re-investigate the abductions and, in return, Tokyo lifted some of its sanctions imposed on the North over its missile and nuclear programs. [Yonhap]

You can read more at the link, but this is a classic North Korean negotiation tactic to make promises in exchange for something they want.  Once they get what they want which in this case was the easing of Japanese sanctions they then renege on the promise for some made up reason in hopes of receiving more of what they want for little to nothing in return.