Tag: hostages

Unlike the last hostage crisis the ROK was involved in, the Moon administration cannot blame this one on the United States:

President Moon Jae-in ordered the use of Korea’s “utmost abilities” and resources to rescue a Korean citizen who has been held by unidentified armed militants in Libya for nearly a month, according to the Blue House Thursday. Three Philippine nationals are also being held.

An anti-piracy unit operating in the Gulf of Aden, which is on a 4,400-ton Korean Navy destroyer, has been deployed to North African waters to lend support.

On July 6, an unidentified armed group entered lodgings for foreign workers at a local water management plant in Jabal Hasouna, western Libya, and abducted the Korean and three Filipinos. They took off with goods as well. A video clip of the hostages was circulated on Facebook on Wednesday, and the Korean Ministry of Foreign Affairs officially confirmed later that day that a Korean national was among the four men held in Libya.   [Joong Ang Ilbo]

You can read more at the link, but really long time ROK Heads may remember when the Korean missionaries were taken hostage by the Taliban in Afghanistan back in 2007, South Korea’s leftists blamed the US for the incident.  The Chief of Staff of the left wing Roh Moo-hyun administration in power during this time was current ROK President Moon Jae-in.

Something I plan to do more of is post various articles of interest that I see while browsing through the historical archives of the Stars & Stripes.  Below is an article I saw about a bizarre hostage incident that occurred in a Seoul teahouse that was published in the April 12, 1972 Stars & Stripes.

The incident involves a 19-year old teenager who took six people hostage in the teahouse before blowing it up with TNT.   Twenty buildings were burned in the resulting fire with nineteen people injured.  Fortunately no one was killed.  Amazingly the teenager survived blowing up the teahouse and claimed he did it because “He did not want to live anymore.”  You can read more details of the incident in the below article.

North Korea continues to build up their collection of bargaining chips and human shields in response to any potential negotiations or conflict with the US overs its nuclear program:

North Korea detained a U.S. citizen tied to a Christian-backed university in Pyongyang, state media said, just two weeks after arresting one of his colleagues.

The arrest on Saturday of Kim Hak-song for committing “hostile acts” brings the number of known U.S. citizens detained in North Korea to four, adding another twist to troubled relations between Washington and Pyongyang as the U.S. seeks ways to slow the North’s nuclear and missile program.

According to the report on Sunday by North Korea’s official Korean Central News Agency, Mr. Kim works for the Pyongyang University of Science and Technology, a university founded in 2010 by James Kim, a Korean-American Christian businessman.  [Wall Street Journal]

You can read more at the link, but it is just incredible to me that despite all these Americans being taken hostage in North Korea Americans keep going there.

Hwang In-cheol holds up a sign saying “North Korea…Be Free My Father” at an event to send a letter to U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon in the border city Paju, north of Seoul, on June 17, 2016. His father Hwang Won has been in captivity since December 1969, when a South Korean plane carrying Hwang, a radio producer, and 50 other crew members and passengers was hijacked by a North Korean agent on its way from the eastern South Korean city of Gangneung to Seoul. (Yonhap)

For those interested the story of how Mr. Hwang’s dad was taken hostage can be read at the below link:

• DMZ Flashpoints: The 1969 Hijacking of Korean Airlines YS-11

Should someone who willing goes into North Korea and does something stupid be considered a hostage?

A U.S. House lawmaker has introduced a bill that appoints a federal officer charged with overseeing efforts to win the release of American citizens held by hostile groups and rogue states like North Korea.

The Hostage Recovery Improvement Act (H.R.1498), introduced by Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-CA) late last month with support from 11 co-sponsors, calls for the president to designate “an existing federal officer to coordinate efforts to secure the release of U.S. citizens who are hostages of hostile groups or state sponsors of terrorism.”

The “Interagency Hostage Recovery Coordinator” should be named within 60 days after the bill’s enactment.

While defining the term “state sponsors of terrorism,” the bill singled out North Korea as a country that should be considered a terrorism sponsor nation under the act, even though the communist nation is no longer on the State Department’s list of states sponsoring terrorism.

U.S. citizens have often been detained in North Korea.  [Yonhap]

You can read the rest at the link.