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Freed South Koreans Return To Face Shame, Critics

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By CHOE SANG-HUN, The New York Times

Published: September 3, 2007

SEOUL, South Korea - The last 19 South Korean Christians freed by the Taliban after six weeks in captivity arrived here Sunday, carrying the portraits of two fellow church volunteers killed by their kidnappers and apologizing for putting their country through a wrenching, divisive ordeal.

'We owe a big debt to the nation and people,' Yoo Kyung-shik, who at 55 was the oldest of the freed hostages, said at the Incheon Airport outside Seoul, reading a prepared statement addressed to the South Korean people.

While the other freed hostages stood behind him, many glancing downward and fighting back tears, Yoo likened his group's contrition to an ancient Korean practice in which criminals were forced to kneel down in public until the king punished or pardoned them.

They face a nation relieved that the volunteers were freed, but also increasingly angry at their decision to travel to Afghanistan despite government warnings, and at what many here consider overzealous proselytizing by South Korean churches.

One man was reportedly stopped by the police as he tried to hurl eggs at the church volunteers, most of whom looked pale and haggard.

The group was then taken to a hospital south of Seoul, where they met their loved ones. The government and Saemmul Presbyterian Church, to which the volunteers belong, insisted that the 23 South Koreans in the group - two were freed earlier - had not been proselytizing, just providing aid. Many religious experts here consider such a distinction meaningless because South Korean churches provide aid to gain converts.

Now that the volunteers are free, some people are demanding an accounting of who is to blame for the crisis they say damaged South Korea's reputation.

Critics seem especially outraged that their government was put in what they called a no-win situation, forced to enter talks with a terrorist group.

Debate on that issue is likely to intensify now that the Taliban say South Korea paid them more than $20 million, which they said would be used for more suicide attacks, according to a Reuters report. The South Korean government has denied such a deal.

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