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| Name | Kim Sun-il |
|---|---|
| Birth date | September 13, 1970 |
| Birth place | South Korea |
| Death date | June 22, 2004 |
| Death place | Iraq |
| Death cause | Beheading |
On May 30, 2004, he was kidnapped in Fallujah — about 50 km (30 miles) west of Baghdad — by the Islamist group Jama'at al-Tawhid wal-Jihad and held as a hostage. The group, which was allegedly led by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, killed him on or about June 22 when South Korea refused to meet their demands that it cancel its plans to send 3,000 more troops to Iraq and withdraw the 660 military medics and engineers already there. (This would put South Korea behind only the United Kingdom in number of non-U.S. coalition troops in Iraq.) Jama'at al-Tawhid wa'l Jihad had initially set a June 21 deadline in a videotape showing Kim pleading for his life. However, on June 22, after initial reports that the militants had given their hostage more time, Al Jazeera television reported that they had received a videotape footage of Kim being decapitated by five men, like hostages Nick Berg and Ken Bigley in Iraq, Paul Johnson in Saudi Arabia, and Daniel Pearl in Pakistan. The report was subsequently confirmed by the South Korean government.
The president of Gana General Trading is said to have known about the kidnapping almost immediately, but he did not report it until after the videotape aired. He had consulted a lawyer, who argued that the situation must be dealt with without government intervention if Kim was to be saved. It is claimed that government officials had little time to react. However, there are also reports that a videotape of Kim in captivity, in which he appears calm and openly criticizes U.S. intervention in Iraq, was delivered to the Associated Press Television News offices in Baghdad at the beginning of June, and that on June 3, an AP reporter in Seoul contacted the South Korean Foreign Ministry asking if they knew of a missing person with a name sounding like Kim Sun-il's.
US President George W. Bush condemned the killers, saying: "The free world cannot be intimidated by the brutal actions of these barbaric people."
Reports and editorials in South Korea's press reflected despair at the death of the hostage Kim Sun-il in Iraq, but also defiance towards the kidnappers. South Korean TV stations interrupted their schedules when Mr Kim's body was discovered and subsequently broadcast special rolling news programmes. "Kim Sun-il killed - body identified" was the headline in the independent daily Donga Ilbo. "Kim Sun-il ends up dead" was how the popular daily JoongAng Ilbo reported it.
Category:1970 births Category:2004 deaths Category:Christian missionaries Category:Christian martyrs of Modern Times Category:Foreign hostages in Iraq Category:Deaths by decapitation Category:Filmed executions in Iraq Category:South Korean Christians Category:South Korean missionaries Category:South Korean people taken hostage Category:South Korean terrorism victims Category:Terrorism deaths in Iraq
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