Posted on 06/22/2004 8:47:50 PM PDT by Ernest_at_the_Beach
SEOUL, South Korea (AP) -
South Korea's president strongly condemned the beheading of a South Korean hostage in Iraq but remained determined to send more troops, saying they were needed to help rebuild the country.
President Roh Moo-hyun rejected the kidnappers' claim that South Korea's plan to send 3,000 additional troops to Iraq would hurt Iraqis. The captors killed Kim Sun-il, a 33-year-old South Korean working in Iraq, after Seoul rejected their demand to cancel the South Korean deployment.
"The South Korean plan to send troops to Iraq is not to engage in hostilities against Iraqis or other Arab people but to help reconstruction and restoration in Iraq," Roh said in brief, nationally televised speech Wednesday morning after news of the killing stunned the country.
South Korea reaffirmed its plan to send troops after a 90-minute emergency meeting overnight of the National Security Council to discuss the killing of hostage Kim, who had pleaded for his life in a video issued by his captors along with demands that Seoul halt its dispatch plan.
The pan-Arab Al-Jazeera TV station said he was beheaded; the Seoul government confirmed only that he was killed.
"I am very sorry and deeply regretful that this tragedy happened, although all the people and the government wished and prayed for the safe return of Mr. Kim Sun-il," Roh said.
The president condemned terrorism as a "crime against humanity" and pledged his government's "determination to deal sternly with it together with the international community."
"We should never tolerate terror as a means to an end," he said.
South Korea said Tuesday that the remaining 22 South Koreans doing business in Iraq would be evacuated by early July.
South Korea plans to dispatch 3,000 soldiers to northern Iraq starting in August. More than 600 South Korean military medics and engineers are already deployed in Iraq.
After news of Kim's death broke, South Korean television showed Kim's distraught family members weeping and rocking back and forth with grief at their home in the southeastern port city of Busan. In a traditional funeral rite, they laid out watermelon and other fruit on a cloth before a photograph of Kim.
A banner hanging in the street outside their home read: "The South Korean people have never fired a single bullet at Iraqis. Please send back Kim Sun-il alive."
South Korea's KBS television reported that angry residents in the neighborhood of Kim's home tore down placards that said: "Koreans are friends of the Iraqis."
Al-Jazeera, which said it received a videotape showing that Kim had been executed, said the execution was carried out by the al-Qaida-linked group Monotheism and Jihad.
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perhaps Teddy "Mohammed" Kennedy would like to go over and explain himself to the distraught parents.
How many Mosques are in South Korea?
RAGHEADS beware.
Yep.....they are REALLY making a LOT MORE PEOPLE around the World MAD. I don't see how they think this is helping their cause. (Except, I guess, Spain blinked.)
Relax. We have it from high authority in the Democratic Party that the threat from terrorists is overrated.</sarcastic hatred of liberals>
Executed? He wasn't executed he was murdered.
Using terms like executed is another way the news media freaks play this down and distort this.
It also would imply Al Qaeda has some sort of authority, moral or otherwise because that is what execution entails -- an authority carrying out a death sentence.
Actually it's working very well. A few more beheadings and Kerry will likely win. The terrorists' greatest weapon of mass destruction is the American left.
UH HUH....yeah, right. No one really cares about their family's safety, do they.
why hasn't the video been released yet...it must be really bad this time
The republican and democrat vote is almost written in stone. The remaining deciding votes are cast by people who have little interest in politics and no real concept of cause and effect in world affairs. To many of them, protecting their families will simply mean, get the hell out of there. They won't know how to fix the situation, they will only dislike the situation and want change.
Unfortunetly they are not sending troops for combat, only support etc... A sop for us not withdrawing ALL of our troops from S. Korea. Some people (and nations) never learn from history. The average young Korean hates our guts and wants us out. After fifty years they should be able, if not willing, to defend themselves.. A U.S. withdraw from S. Korea would mean a green light for N. Korea and a new nation named Korea, one way or the other...We should be able to live with that..
Aw, shoot. We'll have to start taking a headcount.
I have no idea, there may be a lot fewer after this atrocity.
Or it is the Muslims way of saying that being a non-muslim is reason enough to be executed.
Too bad if his shade is on an Atkins diet.
(OK, ok. Keep it up raggheads. Get more and more countries irked at you.)
Only one of any significance. Central Mosque is in the center of Seoul, adjacent to the US Army Headquarters at Yongsan. The mosque was built on a hill above Itaewon with Saudi funding.
Korean TV news is showing the Seoul Central Mosque on TV as I write this.
Remember when the President said that the French and the Germans couldn't share in the contracts for the rebuilding of Iraq, because they didn't help with the fighting? That might have been a short-sighted decision on his part.
If it had been a Frenchman or a German who had been beheaded, maybe they'd be a bit more eager to help us out when it comes time to kick the next raghead country's ass.
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