Seoul , South Korea ( CNN ) A 17-year-old South Korean promised his mother that he would study hard for his exams in exchange for a trip to Turkey . That teenager , called `` Kim , '' disappeared in a southern Turkish border city earlier this month , leading authorities to suspect that he may have slipped away to Syria to join ISIS . While police have not concluded that he joined the terror group , authorities found he had a keen interest in the Islamic militants . Using a Twitter profile picture of an ISIS flag , he frequently tweeted , `` I want join '' and asked to meet `` brothers . '' He followed pro-ISIS accounts and often retweeted the group 's propaganda . On his social media posts , he claimed he was from Chechnya , and lamented that `` male are being discriminated against . '' `` I hate feminist , '' he said , according to a post on his Twitter account on October 5 . `` So I like the isis . '' He retweeted Arabic posts and tweeted in English , but never in Korean . His last tweet was sent on October 10 -- which was the same month he began asking his mother if he could go to Turkey , according to Seoul Metro Police Agency . Kim 's mother told police that she had not been aware of his interest in ISIS . CNN was unable to reach Kim 's parents . South Korea may not be a probable place for aspiring ISIS members -- with less than 0.3 % of the population identifying as Muslim . But ISIS has expanded its reach globally . The Islamic militant group has attracted disaffected youth from around the world -- including the United States , France , Europe and Australia . There have also been reports about recruits joining ISIS from Asia , triggering concerns in the region . Why is ISIS so successful at luring Westerners ? Earlier last year , there was a report of a Chinese fighter caught in Iraq in September . It 's unclear how many Chinese nationals may be fighting with ISIS , but one former Chinese special envoy to the Middle East said there could be about 100 . It remains unclear if some of them are Uighur , a Muslim minority group in Xinjiang . Approximately 350 Southeast Asians were estimated to be in Iraq and Syria , said a Singapore official during a Security Council meeting in November . Currently , two Japanese hostages are held by ISIS with a demand for $ 200 million random . No word from ISIS on hostages . South Korean police found about 517 searches for words affiliated with ISIS , as well as over 50 images of ISIS members toting guns and holding women in Kim 's computer , they said . In another social media account , Kim posted : `` I want leaving my country and families just want to get a new life . '' Reza Aslan , a religious scholar and adjunct senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations described a profile of young people who seek to join ISIS as feeling `` dispossessed or marginalized . They feel somewhat they 're having a crisis of identity . '' `` The assumption is that the religiously zealous are the ones joining ISIS , but that 's not proven out by the data we have so far . '' Kim began liaising with an individual whom he met on Twitter over an encrypted messaging service , police said . On January 8 , he arrived in Turkey with a Korean guardian . Two days later , he disappeared from a hotel in Kilis , a city near the Syrian border . His guardian reported him missing to the South Korean embassy in Turkey on January 12 .
Teenager expressed interest in ISIS and disappeared in Turkey near Syria border . The teen was reported missing by his family on June 12 after he failed to return from a trip to Turkey.