September 03, 2007	Monday	Sha'aban 20, 1428

SEOUL: Nineteen South Koreans held captive by Afghanistan’s Taliban for six weeks under threat of death arrived home on Sunday, saying they felt as if they had died and then got their lives back.

The former hostages had tearful reunions with their families at a hospital outside Seoul before undergoing medical checks.

“We apologise to the people for causing trouble and thank everyone who helped us return home safely,” the spokesman for the Christian aid workers told reporters at Incheon airport after a drama which gripped the country.

“We owe the country and the people a great debt,” said Yu Kyeong-Sik.

“We had basically died and have got our lives back. We plan to live in a way that will make you proud, and we promise that to you and we will repay our debt.” Guerrillas posing as passengers abducted 16 women and seven men on July 19 from their bus in insurgency-plagued southern Afghanistan.

The extremists murdered two men last month to press their demands to exchange the Koreans for Taliban prisoners, a condition firmly rejected by the Kabul government.

After starting talks in Afghanistan with South Korean officials, the Taliban on August 13 released two women in what they called a “goodwill gesture” and finally freed the remainder of the group last Wednesday and Thursday. It was only then that the 19 learnt that two of their colleagues had been killed.

“When we heard about that, all of us were unable to recover from that,” said Yu, 55. “We ask that you give us a little bit of time and space and once we are able to rest we will explain everything in detail.”

A pastor from the Saem-Mul Presbyterian church at Bundang on the outskirts of Seoul, which organised the mission to Afghanistan, said later on Sunday that some of the hostages had been “severely beaten” for refusing to embrace Islam.

“Their ordeal was harder than anticipated as some hostages were severely beaten because they refused to convert,” the pastor, Park Eun-jo, told reporters after holding services with the former captives at the hospital.

The two surviving male hostages, Je Chang-hee and Song Byung-woo, were threatened with death for refusing to convert, Park said, adding that some of the women had been “at risk of being sexually assaulted”.

The South Korean government, powerless to meet demands for a prisoner swap, finally reached a deal for their release with the help of an Indonesian diplomat.

Seoul agreed to go ahead with a previously scheduled withdrawal of its 210 non-combat troops from Afghanistan by year-end, and to ban its missionaries from visiting the Islamic nation.

“The government struggled to strike a balance between the international norms and custom concerning this kind of issue and the absolute premise that we have to save the people’s lives,” Foreign Minister Song Min-Soon said on Saturday.

“The international community will understand it well.” Now that the hostages are free, the church has also come in for strong public criticism for organising what was seen as a reckless trip.—AFP