South Korean hostage pleads for his life on national TV

Kim Sun-il recently told his mother not to worry about his safety. Now, Iraqi militants have issued a televised threat to behead the South Korean businessman.

Yesterday his rasping, desperate cry of "I don't want to die" was being broadcast repeatedly on South Korean television stations, sending a chill through many people who already had reservations about the government's plan to send troops to Iraq.

The militants, in their televised demand, said they wanted Seoul to reverse the decision. The government said the deployment would go ahead as planned in August.

The seventh of eight children, Kim had been working in Iraq as an interpreter for the past year, Yonhap news agency said. As a Christian, he mixed that work with evangelizing, it said.

Kim was born in September 1970 and graduated with a degree in Arabic from South Korea's top language school, Hankuk University of Foreign Studies, in February last year. A university official said Kim had transferred there from a theology college in the southern port city of Pusan three years earlier. He also studied English, Yonhap said.

"Don't worry about me, mum. I feel comfortable," Kim told his mother when she asked about the danger he faced in Iraq during their last telephone conversation in April.

Kim entered Iraq on June 15 last year, according to the South Korean Foreign Ministry, which has set up a task force to seek his release.

He was planning to return to his hometown of Pusan in July to celebrate his father's 70th birthday.

"They should handle this swiftly," his father, Kim Jong-kyu, said on South Korea's MBC television. "Save his life first."

Kim Sun-il works for Gana General Trading, a company with 12 employees in Iraq to supply goods to the US military commissary. He was kidnapped in Falluja on June 17 and his company's president initially sought to negotiate his release without involving the South Korean government, the ministry said.

Kim's kidnapping is not the first involving South Koreans in Iraq.

Seven South Koreans, all evangelical church pastors, were seized by armed men in April but later freed unharmed. They were among a large number of foreigners kidnapped and later freed by gunmen demanding US allies withdraw their troops from Iraq.

South Korea plans to send 3,000 troops to Arbil in the northern Kurdish region of Iraq. The military say about half are combat troops trained to protect the rest as they help rebuild Iraq, distribute aid and train security forces.