Iraqi Militants Reportedly Behead Korean

[ScottD]

Iraqi Militants Reportedly Behead Korean
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Jun 22, 12:59 PM (ET)

(AP) A man identified as South Korean Kim Sun-il, front, sits in front of his captors in this image...
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CAIRO, Egypt (AP) - An Iraqi militant group has beheaded its South Korean hostage, Al-Jazeera television reported Tuesday.

The pan-Arab station said it had received a videotape showing that Kim Sun-il had been executed.

Kim, 33, worked for a South Korean company supplying the U.S. military in Iraq and was abducted last week, according to the South Korean government.

Al-Jazeera, which had not broadcast the tape, said the execution was carried out by the al-Qaida-linked group Monotheism and Jihad.

[PAPA G]

enough is enough!!! the ragheads, need a reall lesson to the whole region, all of them, just cause they got wimmins and chillens, is no viable excuse to not eradicate this cancer!!!

forum rules prevent me from really spewing vile thoughts.

[Shaun]

Papa G I still say we need to go on a hunting trip and handle some of those rag head vermin.

[Stopper]

count me in on that excursion!

[ScottD]

We get them to supply the weapons and ammo, I'll bring can of whoop !!!!!.

[Shaun]

South Korea Confirms Hostage Killed

Tuesday, June 22, 2004



BAGHDAD, Iraq — South Korea (search) confirmed Tuesday that one of its citizens held hostage in Iraq had been killed in spite of promises of an extended deadline to meet his captors' demands.

The South Korean foreign ministry issued a statement confirming that businessman Kim Sun-il (search) had been killed by his Al Qaeda (search)-linked kidnappers, according to Yonhap, the South Korean news agency.

Al-Jazeera television reported that Kim, 33, had been beheaded, but the South Korean ministry didn't discuss the nature of his killing.

Kim's body was found west of Baghdad by U.S. personnel at 5:20 p.m. Iraq time, South Korean Foreign Ministry spokesman Shin Bong-kil told Yonhap.

The South Korean embassy in Baghdad confirmed the body was Kim's by studying an e-mailed photograph, Shin said.

"It breaks our heart that we have to announce this unfortunate news," he added.

Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt (search), coalition deputy operations chief, said the body of an Asian male was found west of Baghdad on Tuesday evening.

"It appears that the body had been thrown from a vehicle," Kimmitt said in a statement. "The man had been beheaded, and the head was recovered with the body."

President Bush condemned the hostage's murder as "barbaric."

Al-Jazeera, an Arabic-language satellite station, first reported Kim's death, saying it had received a videotape of Kim and his captors. The tape didn't show his beheading and Al-Jazeera did not say how it got the tape or when Kim had been killed.

Kim's abductors originally threatened to execute the hostage by Tuesday if South Korea didn't call off its planned deployment of about 3,000 troops to Iraq. The kidnappers then extended their execution deadline during negotiations, according to Ahmed al-Ghreiri, an employee of the NKTS security firm that had been acting as an intermediary.

But his captors apparently changed their minds and decapitated Kim anyway.

South Korea on Tuesday reaffirmed its plans to send 3,000 troops to Iraq despite the hostage's slaying.

Kim worked for Gana General Trading Co., a South Korean company supplying the U.S. military in Iraq.

Bush reacted to Kim's murder in an Oval Office photo opportunity 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.

"The free world cannot be intimidated by the brutal actions of these barbaric people," Bush said.

Kim was shown on the new videotape kneeling, blindfolded and wearing an orange jumpsuit similar to those issued to prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba — and to those that American hostages Nicholas Berg (search) and Paul Johnson Jr. (search) wore during their own recent beheadings.

The tape showed five hooded men standing behind Kim, one reading a statement and gesturing with his right hand. Another captor had a big knife slipped in his belt.

One of the masked men said the message was intended for the Korean people.

"This is what your hands have committed," he read. "Your army has not come here for the sake of Iraqis, but for cursed America."

The Al Qaeda-linked group Monotheism and Jihad took responsibility for Kim's death, according to Al-Jazeera.

After the 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.

The White House reacted with outrage.

"Obviously that would be horrible news to hear," said Press Secretary Scott McClellan, who received the first news of the execution during a White House briefing. There is "simply no justification for those kinds of atrocities."

On Friday, Lockheed Martin engineer Johnson, an American who'd lived in Saudi Arabia for about a decade, was beheaded by his Al Qaeda-linked captors near Riyadh.

Last month, Berg was beheaded in Iraq, possibly by the hand of Al Qaeda-linked terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.

And in early 2002, Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl (search) was kidnapped and beheaded in Karachi, Pakistan by Al Qaeda abductors.

Earlier Tuesday, the Seoul (search) government said it would evacuate all civilians in Iraq by early July.

NKTS official Kim Hyun-taek said earlier Tuesday the captors had asked to negotiate with Choi Sung-gap, president of the company, who planned to leave for Iraq as early as Wednesday afternoon.

His captors had originally threatened to kill Kim if the South Korean government did not cancel its planned deployment of 3,000 troops to Iraq by early Tuesday.

But the president of NKTS, which supplies the bodyguards for Jordan's royal family, said earlier Tuesday that they'd dropped that condition and put forth new demands that Seoul was willing to meet.

"It is highly likely we will see a resolution because in Iraq they have a good impression about South Korea," said Choi, who made the comments to South Korean reporters on Tuesday before news of Kim's execution broke.

In a dispatch from Baghdad, South Korea's Yonhap news agency quoted an "informed source" as saying that negotiations with the kidnappers collapsed over the South Korean government's refusal to drop its plan to send troops.

"As a condition for starting negotiations for Kim's release, the kidnappers demanded that South Korea announce that it would retract its troop dispatch plan," the source was quoted as saying. "This was a condition the South Korean government could not accept. As the talks bogged down, the kidnappers apparently resorted to an extreme measure."

The South Korean government said Tuesday it would evacuate the last of its 22 nationals in Iraq by early next month. Most work for South Korean companies that supply the U.S. military, said Commerce, Industry and Energy Minister Lee Hee-beom.

Kim was believed to have been kidnapped about 10 days ago. A videotape broadcast by Al-Jazeera before the most recent one of him in a jumpsuit showed him pleading for his life but without a blindfold and still wearing his own clothes.

"I don't want to die, I don't want to die," Kim pleaded in that first video, released by his captors Sunday as he begged his government to end its involvement in Iraq.

The recent abductions and attacks appear aimed at undermining the interim Iraqi government set to take power June 30, when the U.S.-led occupation formally ends.

[Mandy]

May his soul rest in peace.

[Snakebite]

Thats terrible news. Just learned about it here instead of TV.
Maybe, just maybe, it will open the eyes of the other countries that dont stand behind us or the allies.
When innocent people are beheaded, its time to dust off the nukes!

They could say the same thing about nukes which his why it's not a good idea to dust off our nukes.
We'll clean up that place little by slow.

[Oxford]

I feel bad for the victims and their family.

However, this terrible barbaric killing will bring out the weak kneed liberals far and wide who stand and wring their hands about why our forces are in Iraq.

Why don't they open their eyes and learn the facts about the Islamic extremist's plan for all who are not of their religion.

[jerry]

Oh boy. If they send 3000 ROK troops over there, & they get thier hands on some of these trouble makers. They just may have screwed with the wrong people.

[Rufus Rhastus J]

It's sad, again someone innocent is the victum. I hope we will do something more to end this sillyness. How is it possible we still even talk about turn over thier gov. to them? They can't even handle simple police actions. How in the world can they be a government?

[Dennis]

Well I think they Chit in their own mess kit on this one.
The ROK soldiers will not tolerate this type of behavior
we will see many beheaded Iraqi and alquedia fighters where the Rok's are deployed