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South Korean Hostage Beheaded in Iraq: Victim was Reportedly an Evengelical Christian

By Jeremy Reynalds
Special Correspondent for ASSIST News Service

BAGHDAD, IRAQ (ANS) -- A South Korean translator working for a company that supplies equipment to US liberation forces in Iraq has been executed after a deadline set by his captors passed.

Al jazeera television network reported that in a videotape it received, the resistance group Jamat al-Tawhid and Jihad said it was fulfilling a pledge it made that the 33-old-year South Korean translator Kim Sun-Il would be beheaded if the group’s demands were not met by the South Korean government.

The captors threatened on Sunday to kill Kim (who was captured last Thursday near Fallujah), in 24 hours if South Korea did not cancel its plan to deploy 3,000 additional troops to Iraq.

South Korea rejected the demand, Al Jazeera reported, and on Monday said it would send forces to Iraq despite an earlier video showing Kim begging for his life.

Kim, an evangelical Christian and Arabic speaker had worked in Iraq for a year as a translator for a South Korean firm supplying goods to the U.S. military.

CNN reported that a senior coalition official in Iraq said the body, which was found by U.S. military police west of Baghdad, appeared to have been thrown from a vehicle.

“The man had been beheaded, and the head was recovered with the body,” the official said. CNN reported that Pentagon sources said the body had been booby-trapped with explosives.

“It breaks our heart that we have to announce this unfortunate news. A body identified to be of an Asian man was found between Baghdad and Fallujah,” said South Korean Foreign Ministry spokesman Shin Bong-kil in Seoul to CNN.

South Korea plans to send 3,000 troops to Erbil in northern Iraq, CNN reported. Military officials say about half are combat troops trained to protect the rest, who are to help rebuild Iraq, distribute aid and train security forces.

Once the troops are in place, South Korea will be the largest coalition partner in Iraq after the United States and Britain.

The BBC reported that last month the same group – Jamaat al-Tawhid and Jihad – led by a top al-Qaeda member, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi - beheaded American hostage Nick Berg. It has also been responsible for a number of other attacks, including the killing of Iraqi Governing Council head Ezzedine Salim.

President George W. Bush condemned the killers, saying “The free world cannot be intimidated by the brutal actions of these barbaric people.”

The BBC reported that in the latest footage aired on al-Jazeera, Kim was shown kneeling on the ground in front of five masked men. His shoulders were heaving, his mouth open. He wore a bright orange jumpsuit and matching blindfold. While the portion of the tape broadcast did not show him dead, Reuters reported that a spokesman for al Jazeera said the tape went on to show one of the men cutting off Kim's head with a knife.

Arab News reported that 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.

Unlike other recent beheadings, Kim’s execution video does not yet appear to have been placed by his killers on the Internet.

According to the Voice of America (VOA), hours after Kim’s death was confirmed, a U.S. air strike hit what military officials say was a known Zarqawi network safe house in the city. At least three people were killed in the strike. Meanwhile, VOA added, two U.S. soldiers were killed when their convoy was attacked near Balad.

Jeremy Reynalds is a freelance writer and the founder and director of Joy Junction, New Mexico's largest emergency homeless shelter, http://www.joyjunction.org or http://www.christianity.com/joyjunction. He has a master's degree in communication from the University of New Mexico and is a candidate for the Ph.D. in intercultural education at Biola University in Los Angeles. He is married with five children and lives in Albuquerque, New Mexico. For more information contact: Jeremy Reynalds at reynalds@joyjunction.org. Tel: (505) 877-6967 or (505) 400-7145. Note: A black and white JPEG picture of Jeremy Reynalds is available on request from Dan Wooding at assistcomm@cs.com.

ASSIST News Service (ANS) - PO Box 2126, Garden Grove, CA 92842-2126 USA E-mail: danjuma1@aol.com, Web Site: www.assistnews.net.

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