Disappearance of David Louis Sneddon

In 2004, an American college student named David Louis Sneddon went missing during a hiking trip to China. After he failed to arrive in Seoul to meet his brother, his family contacted the Chinese police. They completed a quick sweep of the Tiger Leaping Gorge where he was last seen and concluded that he had died during his hike of the gorge.

In May 2012, a Japanese government delegation during their trip to Washington came with an explosive report that said an American man in his early 20s was arrested in August 2004 for helping an illegal North Korean alien. He was released by the Chinese in September, but then picked up by five North Korean state security officers. The following month, the Sneddon family received another lead from a South Korean man with close ties to the North Korean defector community. He said that an American in his early 30s who matched David’s description had been spotted teaching English outside Pyongyang in North Korea.

David knew the Korean language, so he could have been a coveted asset in training North Korean agents. By midsummer 2004, North Korea had lost one of its few remaining American English teachers, Charles Jenkins, who was released on July 9, one month before David had disappeared.