An Australian academic and blogger has gone missing in North Korea in the lead-up to Donald Trump’s upcoming visit to the demilitarised zone.

29-year-old Alek Sigley manages a student tourism company that brings foreign students over to North Korea for educational visits to Kim Il Sung University, where he is reading for a masters in Korean literature.

North Korea specialist Dr Leonid Petrov, a long-time friend of Mr Sigley and a lecturer at the Australian National University, spoke to NewsAU, saying that there were three main theories about what might have happened to him.

The first relates to authorities potentially placing Mr Sigley, a prolific blogger of all things North Korean, in lockdown ahead of US President Donald Trump’s visit to South Korea for security reasons.

…The second possibility is Mr Sigley has been involved in some kind of accident.

The third scenario involves authorities arresting him in connection with a series of stories he wrote for news website NK News.org.

The first and third theories could be linked. ABC reports that Sigley has been uncharacteristically quiet on social media. His family (including his wife, Yuka Morinaga, below) has since shuttered his social media accounts to prevent speculation that could make the situation worse.

“I think that North Koreans potentially might have decided to shut down his blog … because the information was coming out of North Korea, which is unprecedented,” Dr Petrov said.

“But in the context of what is going on in the Korean Peninsula today — President Trump on Sunday will go to the demilitarised zone and I believe tensions and security measures are heightened both in South and North Korea.”

There is a growing political concern for Sigley’s welfare, although Petrov believes that he is in no immediate danger.

“International visitors and students are usually safe in North Korea because they are permitted to study there, they are trusted,” he said.

“But [he] is not controlled and not censored by the North Korean Government — we know it is a police state.

Australia has a limited diplomatic presence in North Korea, but officials have been making enquiries through Swedish diplomats. The ironic thing is that Sigley blogged about how safe North Korea is:

“It’s very safe,” he said.

“I know lots of people who live there … expatriates, students, businesspeople and they all say it’s very safe, they’re not afraid to walk around at night and things like that.

The Department of Foreign Affairs is seeking “urgent” clarification about his disappearance.

To date, his detainment has not been confirmed.

[source:newsau&abc]