Hostage Video Ignites Protest in S. Korea

Hundreds Demonstrate Against Iraq Policy; Mission Sent to Jordan to Negotiate

SEOUL, June 21 -- Jolted by video footage showing one of their countrymen being held in Iraq by kidnappers threatening to behead him, hundreds of South Koreans joined candlelight vigils and prayer groups Monday while the government scrambled to negotiate the hostage's release.

In the video, first broadcast Sunday by the Arabic satellite TV network al-Jazeera and rerun countless times here Monday, Kim Sun Il, 33, screamed for his life while his hooded, armed captors demanded that South Korea quit the international military coalition in Iraq. The video was released three days after the government had finalized plans to begin deploying its main contingent of 3,000 troops there this summer.

The kidnappers gave South Korea 24 hours from sunset Sunday to agree; otherwise, they said they would "send to you the head of this Korean."

After an urgent cabinet meeting, South Korean leaders rejected the demand and dispatched an emergency diplomatic mission to Jordan in an attempt to win Kim's release.

[By Tuesday morning, after the 24-hour deadline had passed, South Korean Foreign Ministry spokesman Shin Bong Kil said the government continued attempts to secure Kim's release but could not confirm whether he remained alive.]

A banner in the background of the video named Kim's abductors as members of Jamaat al-Tawhid and Jihad. The group is associated with Abu Musab Zarqawi, a Jordanian accused of having links to al Qaeda and blamed by U.S. officials for several recent kidnappings and car bombings in Iraq.

U.S. officials pledged to assist in the search for Kim, promising to use military and intelligence resources to help with any rescue effort. But they acknowledged that little progress had been made.

"We're developing that intelligence about where he was captured, under what circumstances he was captured, but I'm just not sure that we have built that body of intelligence yet," said Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt, the chief U.S. military spokesman in Iraq.

Kim was working as a translator for a South Korean contractor supplying goods to the U.S. military and had hoped to become a Christian missionary in the Middle East. He was kidnapped Thursday in Fallujah, 35 miles west of Baghdad, South Korean officials said.

Kim Chun Ho, head of Gana General Trading Co., which employed the abducted translator, told South Korea's semi-official Yonhap news agency from Mosul that "several other third-nationality employees" from the U.S. firm KBR, an affiliate of Halliburton Co., had been traveling in the same convoy as Kim Sun Il and were also taken hostage. The report could not be immediately verified.

Kim was kidnapped one day before South Korea outlined a much delayed schedule to begin sending 3,000 troops to Iraq starting in August. The deployment would make South Korea, which already has 660 non-combat troops in Iraq, the third-largest contributor to forces there, after the United States and Britain.

A majority of South Koreans are against sending the troops, surveys indicate, and the kidnapping led some opponents to demand that the government backtrack.

"Kim is an innocent citizen, and he should not be sacrificed in what is essentially an unjustified invasion," Kim Ki Sik, the head of a citizens' group opposed to the war, said during a demonstration with several dozen protesters Monday in downtown Seoul. "We oppose this war and we oppose the Korean government's decision to send troops despite the fact that the people are against it."

South Korean leaders have called the deployment vital to shoring up their country's alliance with the United States. Ties between the two allies have wavered in recent years, particularly in the last few months, as President Roh Moo Hyun has sought a closer relationship with North Korea even as the United States has tried to isolate the Pyongyang government over its nuclear weapons programs.