Seoul Sends High-Level Delegation to Nagotiate With Iraqi Insurgents

By Yoo Dong-ho
Staff Reporter


Kim Sun-il sits in front of his captors in this image taken from a video obtained by Al-Jazeera television station, Sunday. AP Yonhap


President Roh Moo-hyun said on Monday that his government will stand by its plan to send an additional 3,000 troops to Iraq, irrespective of the abduction of a South Korean national by Arab insurgents.
``We should explain to Iraqis that our troops’ mission is to help with reconstruction,’’ Roh was quoted as saying during his morning meeting with senior aides.

Upon receiving a report on the abduction of Kim Sun-il, a 33-year-old Arabic interpreter, top security-related officials held a National Security Council (NSC) meeting at Chong Wa Dae to address the issue. Kim has worked for Gana General Trading Company in Baghdad, supplying food items and uniforms for U.S. soldiers there.

The Foreign Affairs and Trade Ministry also confirmed no change in Seoul’s troop dispatch plan.

Vice Foreign Choi Young-jin told reporters that the dispatch plan will stay on course, despite threats by insurgents to behead the South Korean hostage. Foreign Minister Ban Ki-moon will cut short his trip to China for a meeting of Asian foreign ministers and return home today upon hearing of the news later in the day.

A high-powered task force of six officers departed for Iraq to work for Kim’s release in Iraq.

In video footage that was aired Sunday by the pan-Arab television station Al-Jazeera and shown repeatedly here, Kim begged for his life and pleaded for the Seoul government to cancel its plan to send troops to Iraq.

``Korean soldiers, get out of here. I don’t want to die,’’ he screamed in English on the videotape. Kim was seen sitting in front of three masked gunmen, one of whom threatened to send Kim’s head home, unless Seoul rescinded its dispatch plan within 24 hours.

The band claim they belong to Tawhid wa al-Jihad, led by al-Qaida operative Abu Mussab al-Zarqawi but the Gana president identified them as members of a Monotheism and Jihad Group.

Kim had been kidnapped in Falluja on June 17, a day before South Korea announced where its troops would be deployed in Iraq, Vice Foreign Minister Choi said. ``The chief of the company where Kim worked as an interpreter had initially sought to negotiate with the kidnappers without notifying the government.’’

South Korea announced on Friday that it will send 3,000 soldiers beginning in early August to the Irbil area in northern Iraq. Some 600 South Korean military medics and engineers who are currently in the southern Iraqi city of Nasiriyah will be redeployed to Irbil to join the larger force.

Once the deployment is complete, South Korea will be the largest coalition partner after the United States and Britain.

yoodh@koreatimes.co.kr