Spirits Sag in South Korea at Death of Hostage
By CHOE SANG-HUN
nytimes.com
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SEOUL, South Korea, July 26 — Ever since Afghan militants kidnapped 23 South Korean aid workers last week, people here have reacted with shock, disbelief and hope, their mood shifting as news from Afghanistan carried conflicting hints about the hostages’ fate.
On Thursday, the national mood reached its lowest point. The government confirmed what millions of South Koreans following the news overnight had hoped would not be true: that a bullet-riddled body found in southern Afghanistan, where the Taliban said they had abandoned it, was indeed that of a South Korean.
Bae Hyung-kyu, a Christian pastor with a big smile who left a wife and 9-year-old daughter behind, was found dead on Wednesday, his 42nd birthday. Many members of the Saemmul Presbyterian Church, to which Mr. Bae and 19 other hostages belonged, wept. They had prayed for the safe return of the hostages. When the news about Mr. Bae came, some were seen on local television hugging one another in tears, some collapsing on the floor.
“The organization responsible for the abduction will be held accountable for taking the life of a Korean citizen,” said Baek Jong-chun, chief secretary for security and foreign policy for President Roh Moo-hyun.
As Mr. Roh’s special envoy, Mr. Baek flew to Kabul on Thursday to work with the Afghan government to try to free the rest of the South Koreans, who have been held since their bus was hijacked on a road south of Kabul last Thursday.
Mr. Baek’s comment appeared to take a stronger stance than the South Korean government’s earlier appeals to the Taliban. But Chun Ho-sun, a spokesman for Mr. Roh, said Thursday that Seoul opposed military operations to rescue the hostages. He also reiterated that South Korea would withdraw its 200 military medics and engineers from Afghanistan by the end of the year as scheduled.
The Taliban threatened to kill more hostages if its demands for the release of an equal number of Taliban prisoners were not met. After conflicting reports on Wednesday that eight of the hostages were to be released, Mr. Chun said Thursday that the authorities believed 22, including 18 women, were still being held. “We resumed the negotiations this morning and there are a lot of efforts going on, but so far we have not reached any final conclusion,” Waheedullah Mujadeddi, an Afghan official involved in the talks, said Thursday. “The Taliban says they are alive, and that’s why we resumed the negotiations.”
Qari Yousef Ahmadi, who says he is a spokesman for the Taliban, said Thursday that the 22 remaining hostages were alive, and that the deadline for the release of the prisoners had been extended to noon on Friday, Agence France-Presse reported.
Television stations in South Korea carried running updates on the situation. In this highly wired country, where the Internet has emerged as a major channel of public opinion, people posted Web messages lamenting Mr. Bae’s death and praying for the release of the other hostages. But many also criticized churches for sending young people to countries like Afghanistan.
“After Reverend Bae’s death, we are more concerned about our family members,” said Che Mi-sook, the sister of a hostage, Che Chang-hee, reading a joint statement from relatives of the hostages. “Many of us suffer a heart pain, and this is a pain that any parent and anyone who has a family will understand.”
For South Koreans, this new crisis represents the cost of the aid and evangelical operations that its Christian churches conduct in some of the world’s most dangerous places.
In 2004, a South Korean interpreter and aspiring Christian missionary was beheaded by militants in Iraq.
Several South Korean missionaries have served time in or remain in Chinese prisons, accused of trying to convert North Korean refugees or for smuggling them to South Korea. One missionary, who was kidnapped by North Korean agents in 2000, is believed to have died in the North.
With 12,000 to 17,000 evangelists in more than 160 countries, South Korea has one of the most aggressive armies of Christian missionaries on earth. Only the United States sends out more — 46,000 by some estimates.
A conservative association of Protestant churches in South Korea has called for dispatching 100,000 missionaries by 2030. Along with those full-time missionaries, South Korean churches dispatch numerous evangelical, educational and medical missions. Saemmul Church has stressed that Mr. Bae’s group was not engaged in evangelism, but was doing only relief work at hospitals and kindergartens.
Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company |
