<http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/31/world/asia/31cnd-hostage.html> July 31, 2007 Police Find Body of 2nd South Korean By CHOE SANG-HUN
SEOUL, South Korea, July 31 — Shocked by the killing of a second South Korean hostage in Afghanistan and weary of the 13-day-old crisis, South Korea urged the United States and Afghan governments on Tuesday to show "flexibility" over Taliban demands to exchange the remaining 21 Christian aid workers from South Korea for imprisoned militants.
But a State Department spokesman, Tom Casey, said that Washington's longstanding policy against dealing with hostage takers had not changed, and that despite American concern for those being held, "I don't see any indication that we're going to be changing that any time soon."
"We certainly have great sympathy for South Korea and for the people that are involved in this incident. It's a terrible incident. They should be let go," he said.
But Mr. Casey added, "In this instance, the burden, just like in other hostage-taking instances, is on those who've done this in the Taliban to release them and to let them go."
The South Korean government's appeal — coupled with a growing frustration in Seoul over what officials here perceive as a lack of cooperation from the United States in resolving the crisis — came hours after the Afghan police found the bullet-ridden body of a second South Korean hostage slain by the Taliban.
A purported Taliban spokesman said the man was killed on Monday because the Afghan government had not released the Taliban prisoners. The South Korean government identified the victim as Shim Sung Min, a 29-year-old former information technology worker.
"The government is well aware of how the international community deals with these kinds of abduction cases," Cheon Ho Seon, a spokesman for President Roh Moo Hyun of South Korea, said in a statement on Tuesday. "But it also believes that it would be worthwhile to use flexibility in the cause of saving the precious lives of those still in captivity, and is appealing to the international community to do so."
Ever since the Taliban kidnapped the 23 South Korean aid workers on July 19, Mr. Roh's government has been caught between two uncompromising forces. The Taliban has been insisting on a hostage-and-prisoner swap, while the American-backed Afghan government counters that bowing to the militants' demands will only lead to more kidnappings.
"We shouldn't encourage kidnapping by actually accepting their demands," Humayun Hamidzada, a spokesman for President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan, told reporters on Tuesday, according to Reuters.
Qari Yousef Ahmadi, who describes himself as a Taliban spokesman, said that the militants would kill more hostages if the Afghanistan government does not release prisoners by noon on Wednesday.
"It might be a man or a woman," he told The Associated Press. "It might be one. It might be two, four. It might be all of them." He said the Taliban had killed the second South Korean hostage because "the Kabul and Korean governments are lying and cheating."
"We cannot contain our anger at this merciless killing and strongly condemn this," said Cho Hee Yong, a spokesman for the South Korean foreign ministry.
But the South Korean government also expressed frustration over the deadlock in negotiations. The Taliban "demand is not within the power of the Korean government because it doesn't have any effective means to influence decisions of the Afghan government," said Mr. Cheon, the presidential spokesman.
"The Korean government strongly condemns and urges an immediate end to these heinous acts of killing innocent people in order to press for demands that it can't meet," he said.
Grief, anger and a growing sense of helplessness gripped South Koreans on Tuesday after the government confirmed that the body of the bespectacled man dumped on a clover field beside a road in southern Afghanistan was that of Mr. Shim, who had volunteered for a South Korean church group's aid mission to the war-torn country.
The body of the group's leader, Bae Hyung Kyu, who had also been shot to death, was found last Wednesday.
"We appeal for support from the people of the United States and around the world for resolving this crisis as early as possible," Kim Kyong Ja, the mother of one of the South Korean captives, said Tuesday, reading a statement from the family while grieving relatives standing behind her fought back tears.
"Especially, the families want the United States to disregard political interests and give more active support to save the 21 innocent lives," she said. "We sustain ourselves through this ordeal anxiety with a belief that they can return home alive," she said. "So please help us."
Mr. Shim's father, Shim Chin Pyo, told reporters of his son: "He had a good heart and did a lot of volunteer work. My son also wanted to help the poor and disabled."
The Taliban kidnapped the 23 South Koreans, most of whom are women and in their 20s and 30s, while they were on a bus traveling from Kabul to the southern city of Kandahar on July 19.
They were the largest group of foreign hostages taken prisoner in Afghanistan since the American-led invasion in 2001.
The South Korean appeal for flexibility came ahead of a meeting scheduled for Sunday between Mr. Karzai and President Bush at Camp David.
Mr. Karzai was severely criticized by the United States and European governments after he approved a deal in March in which five Taliban fighters were freed in exchange for the release of an Italian journalist. He called the trade a one-time deal.
Paik Jin Hyun, an associate dean at the Graduate School of International Studies of Seoul National University, said that if the hostage crisis did not conclude satisfactorily, anti-American groups in South Korea might use it to promote anti-American sentiments in the country.
The People's Solidarity for Participatory Democracy, a major civic group based in Seoul, issued a statement on Tuesday accusing Washington of watching the hostage crisis "as if it were a fire across the river."
"As everyone knows, the Taliban's demand is something the U.S. government can help resolve, not the Afghan or South Korean government," it said. "The South Korean government, citing its alliance with the United States, dispatched troops for the U.S. war against terrorism," it added. "Now why can't it use the spirit of the alliance to help persuade the U.S. administration and save its own people?"
Brian Knowlton contributed reporting from Washington.
-- Yoshie