Kim Sun-il
South Korean National Kidnapped and Beheaded In Iraq

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civilian who had been held captive since last week after the government in Seoul rejected a demand that its troops be withdrawn from the international military force in Iraq, South Korean officials said Wednesday.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 Video Itself
Videos Require Divx

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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