[5] In late 1999, Kim was in northeastern China, where he had established shelters and a school for orphaned and handicapped refugees.

[9] On January 16, 2000, Kim was boarding (or, according to some sources, was forced into) a taxi outside a restaurant in Yanji, a Chinese city near the North Korean border, when unknown men jumped in after him and the vehicle sped away.

[5] Intelligence reports suggested that Kim had died on an undetermined date in a North Korean prison camp in the outskirts of Pyongyang.

However, in December 2014, an appeals court overturned the dismissal, stating that evidence of North Korea's involvement in Kim's abduction, together with testimony from expert witnesses about widespread torture in North Korean prison camps, were sufficient for the family to seek damages.

U.S. federal judges ordered that the vessel be sold to compensate the family of Kim Dong-shik, and also the family of Otto Warmbier, an American tourist who had died in 2017 shortly after being repatriated in a coma to the U.S. from North Korea, where he had spent more than a year in custody on a charge of subversion.