At 00:00 on July 4, the commandos launched rescue operation "Thunder Bolt." At the end of the 52-minute raid, all of the seven hijackers had been shot dead, while only one Israeli commando and three hostages were killed in the process.

Later called "Operation Entebbe", the raid has been rated the most successful hostage rescue mission ever. In many films, commandos are portrayed as heroes who effectively get the better of kidnappers and succeed in rescuing hostages without harming them. Entebbe aside, this is rarely the case in real life.

In October 1985, a B-737 passenger plane belonging to Egypt Air was hijacked by Palestinian militants in Malta. Egypt dispatched its 777 Combat Unit, a special warfare force, to rescue the hostages. As a result of their clumsy efforts, very few of the hostages escaped unscathed -- 57 of the 110 hostages were killed and 40 were wounded.

In April 1980, the U.S. launched a massive operation mobilizing two aircraft carrier fleets and six helicopters to rescue 52 hostages detained inside the U.S. Embassy compound in Iran. The rescue operation had barely begun when it ended in disaster after two of the aircraft collided over the desert.

The question of launching a rescue mission in Afghanistan is gradually coming to the surface, as two of the Korean hostages held by the Taliban have already been killed and the crisis continues to drag on. Regrettably, history shows just how dangerous a rescue operation can be. The Korean military maintains well-trained elite commando units, such as the 707 Unit under the Special Warfare Command, which can carry out rescue missions overseas. But we have no choice but to depend on the U.S. and Afghan militaries for information on the location of the hostages and their condition, and the ways and means for any commando infiltration.

Must we sit idly by, lamenting the situation? Experts emphasize that Korea should always be prepared to protect and rescue its nationals working and living overseas. This is all the more clear in light of the current crisis and the growing potential for more abductions of Koreans by foreign militants, as Korea is sometimes perceived as wealthy and has assumed a bigger international role, including dispatching troops with UN peacekeeping forces.

The greater a country's international role, the more contingency plans it must work out to evacuate its overseas nationals during massive natural disasters or emergencies, or to rescue them from captivity. The U.S. Forces Korea twice a year conducts "noncombatant evacuation operations" -- an exercise aimed at rapidly evacuating Americans from the Korean Peninsula by air and by sea in case of emergency. During the political unrest in Indonesia in 1999, the Korean government took no pro-active measures to rescue Korean nationals. In contrast, Japan put great effort into evacuating its citizens, even dispatching a large transport ship.

It has been almost 80 days since Korean seamen were abducted by pirates in Somalia, but the government has taken no special measures to rescue them. If the state cannot protect its citizens working and living overseas, they tend to have less faith in their country. The government should take notice of this fact.

This column was contributed by Yu Yong-weon, the Chosun Ilbo’s senior reporter for military affairs.