A Korean teenager who has gone missing in Turkey had moved to near the Syrian border with a local man by car, Seoul officials said Tuesday, sparking speculation that he might have entered the conflict-ridden country and joined the Islamic State militant group.

The 18-year-old tourist, surnamed Kim from Seoul, vanished on Jan. 10 after leaving a hotel in the border town of Kilis, according to Korea’s Foreign Ministry and police. He touched down in Istanbul on Jan. 8 and flew to the southern city of Gaziantep before arriving in Kilis by car the next day alongside another Korean, who reported his disappearance to the Korean Embassy on Jan. 12.

CCTV footage showed that Kim rode in a vehicle with a Syrian number plate used for illicit taxi services, along with a man speaking Arabic who waved to him at about 8:30 a.m. on that day, ministry officials said, citing the police there. The driver dropped them after about 25 minutes near a Syrian refugee camp in Besiriye, some 18 kilometers east of Kilis.

“The Arab man approached the driver at around 7:30 a.m. that day and asked him to come pick him up one hour later near a mosque across the hotel where the boy was staying,” a ministry official told reporters on customary condition of anonymity.

The findings are stoking concerns about the teen’s safety and possible ties with the extremist group.

The police here have found from his computer images containing IS fighters and flags, as well as evidence that he had been in contact with a purported IS member named Hassan via social networking services such as Twitter and Surespot.

With Turkey and Syria sharing a porous frontier stretching some 600 kilometers, many foreign terrorist fighters follow Kim’s itinerary linking Istanbul to Kilis via Gaziantep to sneak into Syria, experts and activists say.
“The Turkish police said they have not yet passed a border checkpoint but we’ve not been able to figure out their whereabouts since they reached Besiriye despite all our effort,” the official said.

“We cannot determine anything at this point, nor can we rule out the possibility that he has joined the IS, which would mean an extremely worrying situation. We’re working with other related agencies, putting top priority on his safety and immediate return.”

The ministry has issued a travel warning for southeastern Turkey, especially within 10 kilometers of the Syrian border. Some Koreans have previously visited the region for missionary or volunteer work at Syrian refugee camps.

Seoul and Damascus have no official diplomatic relations.

In September, a Saudi Arabian IS member said in an interview that the group consists of fighters of various nationalities including Korean. Seoul officials said the claim was unreliable.

Some 3,000 people in Turkey are believed to be linked to the extremist group, a Turkish intelligence report said Saturday, calling for stepped-up surveillance in the wake of the deadly attack on Charlie Hebdo magazine in Paris.

Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu has also said that up to 700 Turkish nationals had joined the IS. Ankara has barred more than 7,200 people who were thought to be seeking IS membership from entering Turkey, while deporting nearly 1,200 would-be jihadists.

By Shin Hyon-hee(heeshin@heraldcorp.com)