Kidnappers beheaded a South Korean civilian who had been held
captive since last week after the government in Seoul rejected a demand that its
troops be withdrawn from the international military force in Iraq, South Korean
officials said Wednesday.
U.S. soldiers found the body of Kim Sun-il, 33, late Tuesday afternoon on a
roadside between Baghdad and Fallujah, the city west of Iraq's capital in the
Sunni Triangle where he was abducted last Thursday.
The South Korean Embassy in Baghdad confirmed that the body was Kim's.
Army Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt, the senior U.S. military spokesman in Iraq, said
in a statement: "It appears that the body had been thrown from a vehicle. The
man had been beheaded, and the head was recovered with the body."
Parents of Kim Sun-il react to death of their son.Cho Sung-hoAssociated
PressKim's captors, a group that identified itself as Jamaat al-Tawhid and Jihad
(Arabic for "Monotheism and Holy War Movement"), had threatened in a videotape
released late Sunday to kill him unless South Korea agreed to withdraw the 660
troops it has in Iraq and cancel a planned deployment of 3,000 additional forces
to northern Iraq.
In the video, Kim was shown pleading for his life. "I don't want to die! I don't
want to die!" he screamed in an anguished voice. Pleading for South Korean
soldiers to leave Iraq, he said, "I know that your life is important, but my
life is important."
The South Korean government rejected the demand Monday and attempted to
negotiate for Kim's release. On Tuesday, in another videotape broadcast by Al
Jazeera, the same group said it had beheaded Kim.
The Arabic language satellite TV channel broadcast a videotape showing a
terrified Kim kneeling, blindfolded and wearing an orange jumpsuit similar to
those issued to prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
Kim's shoulders were heaving, his mouth open and moving as if he were gulping
air and sobbing. Five hooded and armed men stood behind him, one with a big
knife in his belt.
One of the masked men read a statement addressed to the Korean people: "This is
what your hands have committed. Your army has not come here for the sake of
Iraqis, but for cursed America."
The video as broadcast did not show Kim being executed. Al Jazeera said the tape
contained pictures of Kim, 33, being slaughtered, but the channel decided not to
air it because it could be "highly distressing to our audience."
The group, headed by Abu Musab Zarqawi, a Jordanian linked by U.S. officials to
Al-Qaida, also asserted responsibility for the beheading last month of American
businessman Nicholas Berg. In Saudi Arabia, a group claiming affiliation with
Al-Qaida said it was behind the beheading of another American, Paul Johnson Jr.
Each time the terrorists have followed the same pattern of getting their message
out, namely by employing an Arab-language Web site to broadcast their deed and
by sending a videotape of the execution to the Al Jazeera network.
Kim, an evangelical Christian who spoke Arabic, was working as a translator for
a South Korean contractor that provides supplies to the U.S. military in Iraq.
His family said he was hoping to save enough money to fulfill his dream of
becoming a missionary in the Middle East.
President Bush on Tuesday condemned the beheading and said, "The free world
cannot be intimidated by the brutal actions of these barbaric people."
Bush made his comments in an Oval Office photo shoot with Prime Minister Peter
Medgyessy of Hungary, a close ally in Iraq and the war on terror. Medgyessy said
his country would not withdraw its troops from Iraq despite the recent killing
of a Hungarian soldier there.
In Seoul, the semi-official Yohnap news agency said President Roh Moo-hyun was
told of Kim's slaying early today. Roh appeared stunned by the news, according
to the news agency, having received an upbeat briefing on the prospects for
Kim's release a few hours earlier by Vice Foreign Minister Choi Young-jin.
The death "breaks our heart," Shin Bong-kil, a South Korean Foreign Ministry
spokesman, said in announcing Kim's death.
In a news briefing early this morning, Shin told reporters that "our
government's basic spirit and position has not changed. We confirm that again,
because our troop deployment is for reconstruction and humanitarian aid support
for Iraq."
Most South Koreans were asleep when Kim's death was reported at about 1:30 a.m.
today. TV networks quickly turned their attention to the modest home in Pusan,
South Korea's second-largest city, where Kim's parents collapsed in grief and
tears, lying prostrate before a traditional death altar they had arranged with
his photo.
Foreigners and Iraqis have been targets of almost daily bombings and
assassinations in recent weeks, which continued Tuesday in northern Iraq and
Baghdad.
View The Videos Yourself Here
The Kidnap Video
The Beheading
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If our enemy is willing to die
for their cause
but we are not willing to kill for ours
who will win?
The South Korean Kim Sun-il, had been working in Iraq as an
Arabic interpreter for a year.
After graduating from Hankuk University of Foreign Studies, last February with a
degree in Arabic, he immediately landed a job at the Gana General Trading
Company, which supplies goods to the U.S. military.
Family members have said that he requested a posting to Iraq so that he could
make money to study in graduate school with hopes of later becoming a
simultaneous interpreter of Arabic and Korean.
Born in September 1970 in the southeastern port city of Busan, Kim Sun-il once
dreamed of becoming a missionary in the Middle East and after receiving a
diploma in English from a local college he started to study theology before
transferring to Hankuk University of Foreign Studies.
Though a self-made man, Kim Sun-il was first and foremost a Christian and his
parents said he "lived with no greed."
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