What happened to David Sneddon?

This is a story about a missing man. But it’s also a tale of how quickly society moves on; and how soon the demand for answers turns, over time, to one or two voices resigned to the fact that those questions will remain forever unaddressed.

This is the story of David Sneddon.

China is one of the most enticing and complex countries in the world. Three million, seven hundred and forty seven eight hundred and seventy seven miles, of which five hundred and seventy nine thousand square miles is raw, untouched wilderness.

The culture dates back way beyond anything in the Western world, and its’ mystique and charm have captured the attention and imagination of so many. The language, Mandarin and Cantonese are difficult but not impossible to learn. It is, in its’ purest form, radically different from anything the West has to offer.

David Sneddon was barely twenty four, but in that short time he had achieved more than many of his peers. He was a Brigham Young University student from a Mormon family in the United States, and, after serving as a missionary for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in South Korea for two years, returned to America. He was inspired by his sojourn, and quickly set about learning Mandarin Chinese.

This wasn’t his main direction; David had paid for the accommodation and other sundries in preparation for his enrolling in law school. This was a young man with a direction. With a purpose and an ambition. He had, prior to leaving America for what would transpire to be the last time, already enrolled for the Law School Entry Exam.

To further his knowledge of Mandarin, he was enrolled into a study-abroad program, provided by the Institute of International Relations in Beijing. This was during the spring of 2004, and instead of returning home, he decided to travel in southern China to further practice the language and explore. He wandered around Beijing for a short while and then, when he felt there was more to see, headed south.

It’s now Summer 2004 and David Sneddon is hiking in the Yunnan Province. The area spanning approximately 394,000 km² and has a population of 47.2 million. The capital of the province is Kunming. He hiked the popular Tiger Leaping Gorge area (near the Jinsha River). He stopped in Shangri-la (in the Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture of Deqen, Yunnan) and stayed overnight. Witnesses reported seeing him there, including at a Korean restaurant (he visited multiple times).

His final email to his parents said although he was enjoying his voyage, he was excited at the prospect of coming home. He emailed them normally around four times a day. From then on, the emails ceased.

It’s August the 14^th and David Sneddon was last reliably confirmed in the area. He had plans to return to the US shortly afterward but failed to show up as expected. He was due to meet his brother at Seoul Airport but the alert was raised when he didn’t show up.

Chinese authorities initially concluded he likely drowned after falling into the river in Tiger Leaping Gorge, but no body was ever recovered. This fast moving river is a deadly area, but in all the fatalities of people who have ventured there, David’s was and remains the only body never recovered from the water.

Moreover, his family and others dispute this, citing evidence that he completed the hike and was seen afterward in town. They say David completed the hike. But this is where David’s disappearance is not just another missing in the woods story, this is where the circumstances surrounding his vanishing starts to get sinister…

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When David Sneddon vanished, it should have sparked off much more interest than it did. Firstly, an American citizen vanishes in a foreign country – some would say a hostile country – there should have been more traction. There wasn’t. There were some perfunctory moves, some questions, some to and fro but diplomatically there didn’t seem to be that much effort. Similarly, the Chinese authorities didn’t seem even interested beyond the registration of the disappearance. Claims were given that his hike took him to the fast moving river, he must have fallen in, and thus would likely never be found.

But those who had preceded him and indeed those since who have met that fate have all been found. David Sneddon is the one person whose body has not been recovered.

Flying to the area David was last seen, his parents visited many of the shops, taverns, markets and hotels David had mentioned in his emails home. All of them recalled seeing the twenty four year old after his hike. In other words, his return was – in hearsay terms at least – verified by different people. But if he had returned, where was he?

In China, all hotels, hostels and other accommodation services have to take strict details of who is staying in their venues. This includes date and time of booking in, duration, their comings and goings, their passport details and a scan of passport and visa paperwork.

Slowly, when returning to some of the places he had been and his parents had had the verbal assurances of his return, those in charge strangely forgot. They claimed not to know the young man in direct contradiction of what they had said before. Moreover, his booking details – which by Chinese Law have to be kept for inspection – had started to vanish from the computers.

Without witnesses or documentary evidence, there was no trace David had been there at all. But his possessions were. Just no David.

It is almost as difficult to image as it is terrifying that someone can be expunged from existence, but this is exactly what the Sneddon family were finding with David.

Something bad had happened and no one seemed to want to know what – except the Sneddon family, who, it seems, were dismissed as looking for someone who only existed in their own imagination.

Going back to the last confirmed time is all we can do; and the last definitive time we can say David Sneddon interacted with anyone was at a Korean restaurant. He’d visited it several times, but as with many things the restaurant and hospitality trade in the far east is not always what it seems.

Many restaurants, bars and hotels have strong links to Government; a Korean restaurant at a tourist location is indeed a prime place to select people who may be interesting or useful to the North Korean junta.

And David Sneddon fitted that bill, perfectly. Young, bright and fluent in Korean and Chinese he would make an ideal teacher to their legions of spies and diplomats, making the spies of tomorrow. And it didn’t matter if Sneddon wanted to or not, complicity by Governments can make anything happen; it would explain how his itinerary and other details vanished from computer systems almost systematically.

It’s twenty two years now since David Sneddon went missing; reports coming out of the secretive North Korea say a young man did indeed appear in late 2004 to teach the military and diplomatic services English and Chinese. And further rumours, albeit unsubstantiated is David replaced another tutor who had outlived his usefulness and been sent back to America.

Whatever the truth here, whether David met his end in Yunnan Province or is effectively trapped in North Korea in a life he didn’t sign up for, it’s a scary truth that any citizen of any country can effectively be magicked away with next to no consequence.