South Korea paid Afghanistan's Taliban more than US$20 million to release 19 missionaries they were holding hostage, a senior insurgent leader said yesterday, vowing to use the funds to buy arms and mount suicide attacks.
The freed hostages flew out of Afghanistan on Friday to Dubai en route for South Korea. Seoul denies paying a ransom. Critics say negotiating with the Taliban sets a dangerous precedent that could spur more kidnappings -- which the Taliban have vowed to carry out.
"We got more than US$20 million from them [the Seoul government]," the commander said on condition of anonymity. "With it we will purchase arms, get our communication network renewed and buy vehicles for carrying out more suicide attacks."
"The money will also address to some extent the financial difficulties we have had," he said.
The commander is on the 10-man leadership council of the Islamist Taliban movement.
"We deny any payment for the release of South Korean hostages," an official at South Korea's presidential Blue House said yesterday in response to the Taliban claim.
"The two conditions for the release are that we pull out our troops and stop Korean missionary work in Afghanistan by the end of the year," said the official, who declined to be identified.
Meanwhile, anxious family members prepared to reunite with their traumatized loved ones.
"I'm very much concerned because she looked like she lost a lot of weight," Cha Seong-min said of his sister, Hye-jin, one of the released hostages.
Suh, 29, and another former hostage, 55-year-old Yoo Kyung-sik, held a news conference with South Korean media in their hotel in the Afghan capital, Kabul. They recounted details of the group's ordeal.
Suh showed reporters a pair of white trousers she wore during captivity. On the inside of the pants, she had written about their movements, meal times and other details -- including Korean food she had longed for.
Public criticism of the hostages has been intense in South Korea, where many blame them for bringing about their hardship because they went to Afghanistan despite government warnings that the war-torn country was unsafe.
Critics also say their trip sullied the country's reputation by forcing the government to negotiate with the Taliban -- a move widely seen in South Korea as a violation of international principles regarding contact with terrorists.
Cha said he hopes to prevent the hostages from seeing the harsh messages that have been posted on Internet bulletin boards, which could worsen their trauma.
Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) is to visit Russia next month for a summit of the BRICS bloc of developing economies, Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) said on Thursday, a move that comes as Moscow and Beijing seek to counter the West’s global influence. Xi’s visit to Russia would be his second since the Kremlin sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022. China claims to take a neutral position in the conflict, but it has backed the Kremlin’s contentions that Russia’s action was provoked by the West, and it continues to supply key components needed by Moscow for
Japan scrambled fighter jets after Russian aircraft flew around the archipelago for the first time in five years, Tokyo said yesterday. From Thursday morning to afternoon, the Russian Tu-142 aircraft flew from the sea between Japan and South Korea toward the southern Okinawa region, the Japanese Ministry of Defense said in a statement. They then traveled north over the Pacific Ocean and finished their journey off the northern island of Hokkaido, it added. The planes did not enter Japanese airspace, but flew over an area subject to a territorial dispute between Japan and Russia, a ministry official said. “In response, we mobilized Air Self-Defense
CRITICISM: ‘One has to choose the lesser of two evils,’ Pope Francis said, as he criticized Trump’s anti-immigrant policies and Harris’ pro-choice position Pope Francis on Friday accused both former US president Donald Trump and US Vice President Kamala Harris of being “against life” as he returned to Rome from a 12-day tour of the Asia-Pacific region. The 87-year-old pontiff’s comments on the US presidential hopefuls came as he defied health concerns to connect with believers from the jungle of Papua New Guinea to the skyscrapers of Singapore. It was Francis’ longest trip in duration and distance since becoming head of the world’s nearly 1.4 billion Roman Catholics more than 11 years ago. Despite the marathon visit, he held a long and spirited
China would train thousands of foreign law enforcement officers to see the world order “develop in a more fair, reasonable and efficient direction,” its minister for public security has said. “We will [also] send police consultants to countries in need to conduct training to help them quickly and effectively improve their law enforcement capabilities,” Chinese Minister of Public Security Wang Xiaohong (王小洪) told an annual global security forum. Wang made the announcement in the eastern city of Lianyungang on Monday in front of law enforcement representatives from 122 countries, regions and international organizations such as Interpol. The forum is part of ongoing