Naseer Al-Nahr • Arab News

BAGHDAD, 23 June 2004 — A South Korean was beheaded yesterday by his Iraqi kidnappers after Seoul refused to remove its soldiers from Iraq. Late at night South Korea said it would evacuate all its “non-essential nationals” from Iraq as soon as possible, but would send 3,000 additional troops next month.

In other violence, two US soldiers were killed in an attack north of the capital.

The Arab satellite television channel Al-Jazeera broadcast a tape showing Kim Sun-il, 33, kneeling before five masked and armed men, one of whom wore a large knife in his belt. Kim, wearing an orange prison jump suit and matching blindfold, heaved his shoulders, his mouth gaping open as if sobbing and gasping for air.

“We warned you, but you refused,” one of the kidnappers said, reading from a written statement. “We had warned you, and this is what you brought upon yourselves. Enough lying and deceit. Your army is here not for the Iraqi people but for damned America.”

The video as broadcast by Al-Jazeera did not show Kim being executed, and the broadcaster did not say when Kim was killed. A spokesman for the television network said the tape went on to show one of the men cutting off Kim’s head with a long knife.

Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt, coalition deputy operations chief, said the body of an Asian male was found west of Baghdad in the evening. “It appears that the body had been thrown from a vehicle,” Kimmitt said in a statement. “The man had been beheaded, and the head was recovered with the body.”

The South Korean Embassy here confirmed Kim’s identity by checking a picture of the remains that it received by e-mail, the South Korean Foreign Ministry said.

President George W. Bush condemned the beheading as “barbaric”. “The free world cannot be intimidated by the brutal actions of these barbaric people,” the president said.

The grisly killing was reminiscent of the decapitation of American businessman Nicholas Berg, who was beheaded last month on a videotape posted on an Al-Qaeda-linked website by Tawhid wal Jihad group, which claimed responsibility for Kim’s death. Berg was wearing the same orange prison-style clothing as Kim.

In Saudi Arabia, American helicopter technician Paul M. Johnson Jr., 49, was kidnapped by Al-Qaeda militants who followed through on a threat to kill him if the Kingdom did not release its Al-Qaeda prisoners. An Al-Qaeda group claiming responsibility posted an Internet message that showed photographs of Johnson’s severed head.

Kim, 33, worked for a South Korean company supplying the US military in Iraq, according to the South Korean government. He was believed abducted several weeks ago.

After news of Kim’s death broke, South Korean television showed Kim’s distraught family members weeping and rocking back and forth with grief at their home in the southeastern port city of Busan.

The American casualties came when a US military convoy came under small arms fire at noon near Balad, about 80 km from Baghdad. Aside from the two killed, one soldier was wounded and evacuated to a nearby coalition medical facility.

— Additional input from agencies