Left Flank

Update: Stand down the expeditionary forces and netizens!

Original (Correct) Post: The alleged kidnapping of five South Korean nationals (via TMH's «Five Koreans in Mexico Released… But Questions, Questions»)Yonhap and TV, have run like a national affront. However, AP characterizes it a bit more seedily.

Mexican authorities said the South Koreans were kidnapped on July 14 while driving in Reynosa, across the border from McAllen, Texas, and their captors had demanded $30,000.

Herrera said the four men and one woman were not in Mexico on business but instead were here looking to cross into the U.S. illegally.

«They were held so (their kidnappers) could profit for crossing them to the United States,» Herrera said.

He said investigators tracked several phone calls that led to the names of people-smugglers involved in the kidnapping. Herrera did not say if anyone had been arrested.

He said the released captives would be interviewed by federal investigators.

According to Yonhap, the five were not even all South Korean. One is supposedly Chinese. And, all this when ROK is set to receive visa-free travel privileges to the US.

Now that the ROK's NIS has outed the KCIA for the kidnapping of former ROK President Kim Dae-jung in Tokyo in 1973, how many governments (and, non-state actors) will have to apologize? This sordid tale is hardly new, except perhaps for a little bit about hiring Japanese criminals to assassinate KDJ.

But, really, this is the annoying part of this revelation:

Kim's spokesman said in a statement he was disappointed Park was not directly implicated in the plot despite ample evidence. A panel of Kim's associates called on the South Korean and Japanese governments to apologies.

The NIS report said the government of Japan also bore some responsibility for the case for conspiring in a cover up.

Japan on Wednesday rejected the NIS claim.

«We have expressed our displeasure, so I hope that the South Korean government would deal with that appropriately.» Chief Cabinet Secretary Nobutaka Machimura told a news conference.

«If South Korea were to say the responsibility lies with Japan, then we cannot accept that.»

And, for what should Tokyo apologize?

After losing the 1971 presidential election to Park Chung Hee by a thin margin, Kim was injured during an assassination attempt that later turned out to be a KCIA plot, and went into exile overseas. He visited Tokyo at the invitation of Japanese lawmakers to raise support for his prodemocracy movement.

The fingerprints of Kim Dong Woon, the first secretary of the South Korean Embassy, were then found by Japanese police in Kim's hotel room, raising suspicion that the intelligence agency was involved in his disappearance. The police demanded the right to question the secretary, but he used his diplomatic immunity to avoid police questioning.

Although the Japanese public was surprised by the possibility Seoul was involved in the abduction, Japanese police failed to delve deeper into the case. In November 1973, then Prime Minister Kakuei Tanaka struck a secret deal with South Korean counterpart Kim Jong Pil to have Seoul issue an apology and promise to fire the secretary.

Perhaps, by this logic, the US needs to apologize:

The U.S. Central Intelligence Agency and Japanese officials learned of the plot and the United States sent what is believed to have been an aircraft to find the boat and buzz the kidnappers, intelligence officials and Kim himself have said.

With the kidnappers caught in the act, Kim's life was spared. He was later taken to South Korea and placed under house arrest by Park's pro-U.S. government.

But, let's not ask Park Chung-hee's daughter for an apology! That's unfair!

First, it was Afghanistan as the hostage-grabbing leader in Eurasia, now there's a Japanese student in southeastern Iran.

Asked about the possibility of Iran paying a ransom or exchanging captives, Foreign Ministry spokesman Mohammad Ali Hosseini told a televised news conference on Monday:

«There has been news about this ... that there should be a money exchange or what, but this is illegal.»

Iran was seeking to secure the student's release and was hoping he would be freed, Hosseini said.

«We know that the gentleman is alive .... we are making certain efforts to release him.»

Last Thursday an unnamed Iranian official was quoted as saying the kidnappers had offered to exchange the student for the jailed son of their gang leader.

Southeastern Iran has been the scene of numerous clashes between the military and well-armed drug smugglers.

Other tourists, including a couple from Belgium, have been abducted recently. Some have been held for weeks as kidnappers tried to secure the release of relatives from jail.

Iran's border regions with Afghanistan and Pakistan are a major smuggling route for drugs and other contraband. More than 3,300 Iranian security personnel have died in the region fighting drug traffickers since Iran's 1979 revolution.

But, to a question the Asahi Daily also asks, what is a student volunteering to teach English and Japanese originally in Nepal doing now in Iran?

As three Talibs brag about how much evil South Korean ransom buys (via Lost Nomad), South Korean hostages not fortunate enough to be kidnapped in Afghanistan or to be recruited from a rich congregation in Seoul, have languished in limbo since May, 2007.

Of course unlike the 23 Christian missionaries and Kim-Sun-il for that matter, the 4 Koreans in Somalia aren?t getting that much media attention, and as a result the Korean government may have decided to ?forget? about the hostages and hope that the problem will go away.

Rather than a matter of public support for dumb evangelicals, perhaps it's cost-benefit analysis. It's a matter of how to use taxpayer won most wisely. Four sailors just can't give Seoul the sort of anti-American bang for the won - that keeps on killing - blundering into a Muslim battlefront can.