08-14-2007, 07:08 PM
Taliban Release 2 South Korean Hostages
By Choe Sang-Hun
Monday, August 13, 2007
International Herald Tribune
SEOUL: Two women among 23 South Koreans kidnapped by the Taliban in mid-July were freed Monday and were in Korean custody, the Seoul government said, announcing the first major breakthrough in a crisis that has gripped South Korea for almost a month.
The two woman, identified as Kim Ji Na, 32, and Kim Kyong Ja, 37, were going through a medical checkup "in a safe location," said Cho Hee Yong, a Foreign Ministry spokesman in Seoul.
Since two male hostages were killed last month, the South Korean government has been under intense pressure to rescue the remaining 21, most of them women and in their 20s and 30s. South Korean officials entered face-to-face talks with the Taliban over the weekend.
All major TV stations in South Korean interrupted their regular programing to report the two women's release. President Roh Moo Hyun welcomed the news and told his government to "exert all efforts for the early return of the other hostages," said his spokesman, Cheon Ho Seon.
The two women wept as they got out of a dark gray Toyota vehicle driven by an Afghan elder and into one of two Red Cross sport utility vehicles waiting on a rural Afghan roadside, The Associated Press reported. The women said nothing to reporters who had been alerted by a Taliban spokesman to the handoff location, 10 kilometers, or 6 miles, outside of Ghazni, in eastern Afghanistan.
The women, who wore head scarves, were driven to the U.S. base in Ghazni, where American soldiers searched them and then let them into the base, The AP said.
Kim Ji Na, a digital animation artist, and Kim Kyong Ja, a software company worker, were among the group of 23 church volunteers whose bus was hijacked July 19 on a road between Kabul and the southern city of Kandahar.
"I am so happy that my sister has been released," said Kim Ji Woong, 35, a brother of Kim Ji Na, during a nationally televised news conference at Bundang Saemmul Presbyterian Church, to which the hostages belonged. "But our hearts remain heavy when we think about the other hostages."
The women were the first of the hostages to be released alive. It remained unclear whether South Korean negotiators had offered incentives for their release, such as paying a ransom.
The Taliban decided to release these two "for the sake of good relations between the Korean people and the Taliban," said Qari Yousef Ahmadi, who claims to speak for the insurgent group, according to The AP. "We are expecting the Korean people and government to force the Kabul administration and the U.S. to take a step toward releasing Taliban prisoners."
The Taliban have been demanding that the South Korean hostages be traded for an equal number of militant prisoners held in Afghan and U.S. military custody. South Korea has urged the Afghan and U.S. governments for "flexibility" toward the Taliban demands. But Kabul and Washington have said they would not release prisoners since this might encourage kidnappings.
The Taliban have said they released the women partly because they were ill. Kim Ji Na was taking medicine for a back pain before she left for Afghanistan on July 13 on an aid mission to provide relief at Afghan hospitals and kindergartens, said her brother, Kim Ji Woong.
Kim Kyong Ja, the other woman released, had kept her Afghan trip secret from her family for fear it would worry her aging parents. Her brother, Kim Kyong Seok, urged the government to save the remaining 19 hostages. With other relatives standing behind him, he also offered an apology. "We are sorry to the people and government for the ordeal they have gone through," he said.
The hostages and their church have been under fire from many South Koreans, especially bloggers, who criticized them for traveling to Afghanistan despite government warnings.
The church said its volunteers used their vacations to help Afghan children, not to proselytize. Nonetheless, the crisis highlighted South Korean evangelical churches' aggressive expansion overseas, even in Islamic countries.
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