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The 19 Korean hostages in Afghanistan started being set free on Wednesday after talks over their release ended successfully. The Taliban demanded that Korea cease all missionary work in Afghanistan, and our government promised to do so. The Christian Council of Korea and the Korea National Council of Churches said they would honor this agreement and pledged to follow the government¡¯s policy.
Two young men lost their lives in this crisis. Korea suffered considerable losses, as the entire country was stuck in a quagmire for 40 days. And 48 million Koreans had to go through the nightmare of daily threats by the Taliban to kill the hostages. Amid the horror of the situation, there are many thoughts Koreans kept to themselves, mindful of the urgency facing the hostages whose lives were at the mercy of the Taliban. Most of those thoughts are questions aimed at Christian churches in Korea.
A wide variety of different religious groups coexist in Korea, including Protestants, Catholics, Buddhists and Muslims, and there have been hardly any incidents of violence between them. But Korea is an exceptional case. Right now around the world, there are countries like Lebanon which has become a battleground due to religion, Israel, where gunshots never cease due to religion, and Iraq, where tens to hundreds of people are killed in an instant due to terror attacks involving religious groups.
Afghanistan is one of the countries that fall into this category. It was to this country, where a fundamentalist group is leading the conflict, that 23 young Koreans headed and were snared in a trap. They had traveled to a country that the Korean government had explicitly warned against by posting ample signs and notices. And during the negotiations to secure their release, the Korean government had to hold face-to-face talks with the Taliban in their territory, having no choice but to breach the international practice of refusing to negotiate with terrorists. It is common knowledge that a country must pay the price sooner or later if it commits an act that veers from the principles of international politics. All of this happened simply because some young Koreans traveled to Afghanistan totally unprepared and ended up getting kidnapped.
It is time for Christian churches in Korea to reflect on this problem. They must voice responsible words after putting deep thought into how they should go about spreading their faith around the world, while at the same time respecting the pride and identities of those adhering to different beliefs.
For this to happen, Christian churches need to engage in some frank discussion over how they intend to view this incident. And only if they find solutions following such discussions to ensure this type of incident will not happen again can the diplomatic and financial losses of the Korean government and the psychological sufferings of the public be justified.
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