David Sneddon, a US student of Brigham Young University who went missing in Yunnar Province in 2004 and declared dead by Chinese police in what they purported to be a hiking accident has turned up alive in North Korea after being kidnapped to serve as Kim Jong Un’s personal tutor, reports the Dailymail.

Mr Sneddon who disappeared when he was 24 years old is reported to be living in North Korean Capital, Pyongyang, with a wife and two kids and teaches English to children.

According to Choi Sung-yong, head of South Korea’s Abductees’ Family Union in a report published on Wednesday, Sneddon was in fact kidnapped to be an English tutor to the then – heir to North Korea

The news was met with joy and hope this week by Sneddon’s loved ones especially his parents Roy and Kathleen Sneddon who never gave up hope that their son was alive and continue to campaign for his release. 

His mother, Kathleen Sneddon, said the report about her son being in North Korea “doesn’t surprise me at all.”

“We just knew in our heart that he was alive, so we had to keep fighting,” she said.

The Sneddons had quickly grown skeptical of Chinese authorities’ explanation that he likely drowned while hiking 2004. Among the reasons for their skepticism was that Sneddon’s body was never recovered.

They believe their son was targeted because of his fluency in Korean, which he used while serving on a Mormon mission in South Korea