SOUTH KOREAN CHRISTIAN MARTYR: KIM SUN-IL (SEPTEMBER 13, 1970 TO JUNE 22, 2004)

           On this date, June 22, 2004, Kim Sun-il, a South Korean translator and Christian missionary was kidnapped and executed in Iraq. There is some justice served after one of the alleged leaders of the terrorists, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, was killed in a targeted killing by the US Air Force.  In loving memory of him, we will make him one of the 26 Christian Martyrs of Unit 1012 and we will remember him every year on June 22. We will post information about him from Wikipedia.

Kim Sun-il [PHOTO SOURCE: http://drinkthis.typepad.com/main/2004/06/as_expected_the.html]

Born	September 13, 1970 South Korea
Died	June 22, 2004 (aged 33) Iraq
Cause of death	Decapitation
Body discovered	June 23, 2004
Nationality	South Korean
Occupation	Translator
Korean name
Hangul	김선일
Hanja	金鮮一
Revised Romanization	Gim Seon(-)il
McCune–Reischauer	Kim Sŏnil

Kim Sun-il (September 13, 1970 – c. June 22, 2004) was a South Korean translator and Christian missionary who was kidnapped and executed in Iraq.

Early life and education

Kim was fluent in Arabic, holding a graduate degree in that language from Seoul's Hankuk University of Foreign Studies in February 2003. He also had degrees in English and theology, and had hoped to become a missionary in the Middle East.

Terrible wait for news ... Kim Jong-kyu and Shin Young-ja, the father and mother of Kim Sun-il, with their son's picture at their home in Busan. Photo: AFP/Choi Jae-ho [PHOTO SOURCE: http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2004/06/21/1087669922416.html?from=storylhs]

Kidnapping

Kim arrived in Iraq on June 15, 2003, working for Gana General Trading Company, a South Korean company under contract to the American military. On May 30, 2004, he was kidnapped in Fallujah — about 50 km (31 mi) west of Baghdad — by the Islamist group Jama'at al-Tawhid wal-Jihad and held as a hostage. The group, which was allegedly led by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi,  killed him on or about June 22 when South Korea refused to meet their demands that it cancel its plans to send 3,000 more troops to Iraq and withdraw the 660 military medics and engineers already there. (This would put South Korea behind only the United Kingdom in number of non-U.S. coalition troops in Iraq.) Jama'at al-Tawhid wa'l Jihad had initially set a June 21 deadline in a videotape showing Kim pleading for his life. However, on June 22, after initial reports that the militants had given their hostage more time, Al Jazeera television reported that they had received a videotape footage of Kim being decapitated by five men, like hostages Nick Berg and Eugene Armstrong in Iraq, Paul Johnson in Saudi Arabia, and Daniel Pearl in Pakistan. The report was subsequently confirmed by the South Korean government. In the murder video, he is fitted with an orange jumpsuit and blindfolded, one of the captors reads a statement and then another captor takes out a knife and decapitates him. The statement said: "Korean citizens, you were warned, your hands were the ones who killed him. Enough lies, enough cheatings. Your soldiers are here not for the sake of Iraqis, but for cursed America".

The president of Gana General Trading is said to have known about the kidnapping almost immediately, but he did not report it until after the videotape aired. He had consulted a lawyer, who argued that the situation must be dealt with without government intervention if Kim was to be saved. It is claimed that government officials had little time to react. However, there are also reports that a videotape of Kim in captivity, in which he appears calm and openly criticizes U.S. intervention in Iraq, was delivered to the Associated Press Television News offices in Baghdad at the beginning of June, and that on June 3, an AP reporter in Seoul contacted the South Korean foreign ministry asking if they knew of a missing person with a name sounding like Kim Sun-il's.

During an anti-war rally in Seoul, Protesters burn a picture of al-Qaida-linked militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi next to a portrait of slain South Korean Kim Sun-il, at left. South Korea's president said his nation was "wrenched with grief" Wednesday over the beheading of Kim in Iraq but reaffirmed his resolve to send troops there and "deal sternly" with terrorism. [PHOTO SOURCE: http://www2.ljworld.com/photos/2004/jun/24/48324/]

Reaction

South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun's National Security Council issued a statement condemning the killing. South Korea's Ministry of Information and Communication has banned the Kim Sun-il murder video and is trying to prevent it from being spread. The unedited video was available on the website Ogrish.com during the summer of 2004. The website received DDoS attacks as a result of hosting the footage.

U.S. President George W. Bush condemned the killers, saying: "The free world cannot be intimidated by the brutal actions of these barbaric people."

Reports and editorials in South Korea's press reflected despair at the death of the hostage Kim Sun-il in Iraq, but also defiance towards the kidnappers. South Korean TV stations interrupted their schedules when Mr Kim's body was discovered and subsequently broadcast special rolling news programmes. "Kim Sun-il killed - body identified" was the headline in the independent daily Donga Ilbo. "Kim Sun-il ends up dead" was how the popular daily JoongAng Ilbo reported it. In South Korea, thousands of people rallied against the South Korean military going to Iraq, and to express anger about Kim's death, they burned portraits of the mastermind of his killing, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. The South Korean government eventually passed a law barring passport issuance for 1–3 years to South Koreans who "damage national prestige"; the law was interpreted as an attempt to curtail Christian missionaries, especially after the 2007 South Korean hostage crisis in Afghanistan.

A portrait of slain Kim Sun-il, pictured with a bible, on an altar during a funeral service at a hospital in Pusan, Wednesday. / Yonhap [PHOTO SOURCE: http://newscompass.blogspot.com.au/2004_06_01_archive.html]

We will be commending two prayers from the 1662 Book of Common Prayer for him and his loved ones:

A Prayer for All Conditions of Men:

O God, the Creator and Preserver of all mankind, we humbly beseech thee for all sorts and conditions of men; that thou wouldest be pleased to make thy ways known unto them, thy saving health unto all nations. More especially we pray for thy holy Church universal; that it may be so guided and governed by thy good Spirit, that all who profess and call themselves Christians may be led into the way of truth, and hold the faith in unity of spirit, in the bond of peace, and in righteousness of life. Finally, we commend to thy fatherly goodness all those who are in any ways afflicted or distressed, in mind, body, or estate; [especially those for whom our prayers are desired]; that it may please thee to comfort and relieve them according to their several necessities, giving them patience under their sufferings, and a happy issue out of all their afflictions. And this we beg for Jesus Christ's sake. Amen.

Burial of the Dead 1662:

ALMIGHTY God, with whom do live the spirits of them that depart hence in the Lord, and with whom the souls of the faithful, after they are delivered from the burden of the flesh, are in joy and felicity: We give thee hearty thanks, for that it hath pleased thee to deliver this our brother out of the miseries of this sinful world; beseeching thee that it may please thee, of thy gracious goodness, shortly to accomplish the number of thine elect, and to hasten thy kingdom; that we, with all those that are departed in the true faith of thy holy Name, may have our perfect consummation and bliss, both in body and soul, in thy eternal and everlasting glory; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.