Kim Sun-il

Infobox Korean name
hangul=김선일
hanja=金鮮一
rr=Gim Seon-il
mr=Kim Sŏn-il

Kim Sun-il (September 13, 1970 – c. June 22, 2004) was a South Korean translator who was kidnapped and killed by Islamic extremists in Iraq.

Kim was fluent in Arabic, holding a graduate degree in that language from Seoul's Hankuk University of Foreign Studies in February 2003. He also had degrees in English and theology, and had hoped to become a Christian missionary in the Middle East. He arrived in Iraq on June 15, 2003, working for Gana General Trading Company, a South Korean company under contract to the United States military.

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 wa'l Jihad and held as a hostage. The group, which was 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. [(Korean) [http://joongangdaily.joins.com/200406/24/200406242326355309900090309031.html Joongang Daily News, June 24, 2006] ]

Reaction

flagcountry|South Korea - President Roh Moo-Hyun's National Security Council issued a statement condemning the killing. The South Korean Ministry of Information and Communication has banned the Kim Sun-il murder video and is trying to prevent it from being spread. The unedited video was available on the website Ogrish.com during the summer of 2004.

flagcountry|United States - 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 as 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.

ee also

* 2003 invasion of Iraq
* 2007 South Korean hostage crisis in Afghanistan
* Human rights situation in post-Saddam Iraq
** Paul Marshall Johnson, Jr.
** Shosei Koda
** Eugene Armstrong
** Jack Hensley
** Kenneth Bigley
*Fabrizio Quattrocchi
*List of Korea-related topics

References