hankyoreh

By now, the news of the release and return of the former South Korean hostages has reached the South Korean public, while members of the group have reunited with their families and will now start the long journey back to resuming their lives. But questions still remain as to where and in what conditions they were kept for the six weeks they were held hostage. Over the weekend, government personnel involved in the negotiations began to release some of these details.

The 19 South Korean Christian volunteers returned home from Afghanistan on Sunday. The group of 23 had been traveling by bus in the war-torn country to do aid work in the southern city of Kandahar, when they were kidnapped at gunpoint by Taliban insurgents. Two male hostages were killed shortly after they were abducted, while two female hostages were freed last month after the South Korean government began direct negations with the insurgents.

The former hostages’ individual accounts of their time in captivity reveal that they underwent various difficulties throughout their ordeal, such as unsanitary living conditions, lack of proper medical supplies, and separation into groups that were kept in varying conditions. Some of the main points from their stories, as well as reports from those involved in the negotiations, appear below:

Bugs: Government negotiators say that the hostages reported asking their abductors for medicine because they had been bitten by vermin. Many scratches were witnessed on hands and feet of the former hostages upon their release, providing clear evidence that they had been confined in unsanitary locations such as caves, mud huts or cattle sheds.

In a secret diary kept by Seo Myeong-hwa and written on the inside of her pants, Seo wrote that she had often failed to get to sleep because of fleas.

Medicine: Though the South Korean government and other aid groups delivered medicine to the hostages on several occasions, the Taliban may not have given it to them if it contained anything unusual. As one of the negotiators said, “We had put the medicines on the site that we had agreed to via contact with the Taliban, but they may only have taken common medicines with them, such as painkillers or digestive aids, and left any unusual drugs. The Taliban may have worried that a microchip had been planted into the medicines as a way to trace their movements.”

In a press conference in Kabul on Aug. 31, Yoo Kyung-shik, one of the former hostages, said, “I have to take two kinds of hormone medication a day because I had surgery for thyroid cancer. A week after the kidnapping, my pills ran out and I tried to ask the Taliban to get some more medication, but they did not bring it. Later, I became aware that the government had sent the pills three times.”

Groups: The 23 hostages were first separated into two groups of 11 and 12. Shortly thereafter, they were separated into five to six smaller groups of three people. The hostages remained separated until their release and were treated differently by each group that held them, negotiators say. Some groups were threatened with death, poor food, disease and blackmail every day. However, other groups, managed by civilians, were treated with relatively better food and sanitary conditions. The Taliban ordered local farmers to watch the hostages in the daytime, but kept them under direct surveillance at night, the negotiators said.

Ransom denial: South Korean Foreign Minister Song Min-soon, upon his arrival on Saturday in Seoul after having traveled to the Middle East and Russia, denied media reports that the government had paid a ransom to the Taliban in return for releasing the hostages. “There is no such thing,” Song told reporters. “This crisis is related to diplomacy as well as the perspective of the general public and public awareness of citizens in foreign nations,” Song said. “Room for negotiations through diplomatic channels was very restricted.”

Eating: After being released, the former hostages were reluctant to eat the food at their hotel, the negotiators reported, because they had been forced to eat what they regarded as substandard food for over 40 days. They also worried that eating greasy food would cause them to suffer from stomach disorders or diarrhea. The negotiators also said that the former hostages consumed smaller amounts of food than other people staying at the hotel.

Before boarding their flight to South Korea, the former hostages were given lunch at a Korean restaurant in Dubai, where they ate processed rice and dry seaweed. When the restaurant offered pajeon, or flat cakes made with wheat flour, some of those in the group said that they did not want to eat pajeon because they had always eaten food made with wheat flour while they were in captivity. A government negotiator said, “Most of the former hostages said that they wanted to eat instant noodles while they were in captivity.”