By Kang Seung-woo
A Korean teenager, who went missing recently in Turkey near the Syrian border, exchanged messages with a person who could be a member of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) terrorist group, police said Monday.
The Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency said the 18-year-old, surnamed Kim, exchanged messages via Twitter and Surespot, a secure mobile messaging app, with a person in Turkey last month.
“We found that Kim talked to a person in Turkey on his Twitter account,” police said. They subsequently decided to use Surespot to communicate instead, police noted.
Police do not know what exact messages were exchanged between the two because Kim took his phone with him to Turkey on Jan. 8.
These latest findings come one day after police found photos of ISIS members taken with their flag on Kim’s computer, amid suspicions that he may have joined the jihadist group.
Turkish newspaper Milliyet reported earlier that he had exchanged emails with ISIS and probably crossed into Syria to join the militant group.
Police here confirmed that Kim travelled to Turkey with another Korean, a church acquaintance of the teenager’s parents.
Kim’s travel companion reported him missing to the Korean embassy in Ankara last Monday, two days after the teenager disappeared from a hotel in Kilis, a town close to the Syrian border.
Kim left his hotel room with his luggage and has not contacted his family since.
No hard evidence has yet been found that he has entered Syria or joined the group, however.
The radical Islamic group controls large parts of Syria and Iraq and is blamed for numerous terrorist atrocities in the area. ISIS has also been recruiting young people from around the world using social media.
About 20,000 people from 90 countries worldwide are believed to have joined ISIS after entering through Syria.
The Korean Foreign Ministry has issued an advisory warning for people to refrain from visiting Kilis.
Kim’s mother has strongly denied the possibility that her son joined ISIS, saying he had just exchanged emails with his pen pal Hasan who is believed to live in Turkey.
In cooperation with its Turkish counterparts, the Korean Ministry of Foreign Affairs is now trying to figure exactly out who Hasan is.