By Yoo Dong-ho
Staff Reporter

A South Korean national was stranded in the Iraqi city of Mosul, 450 kilometers north of Baghdad, due to the deteriorating security situation, the Foreign Ministry said on Tuesday.

Choi Wook, a 33-year-old worker employed by Cana General Trading Co., was stranded while being sent on an assignment to a U.S. air force base in the city of Suni stronghold. Cana, supplier of foodstuffs and uniforms for U.S. soldiers, is the employer of Kim Sun-il, who was kidnapped and killed by Muslim terrorists. Cana president Kim Chun-ho is scheduled to return to Seoul to explain the circumstances surround Kim’s death.

``We instructed the Korean embassy in Iraq to take measures to help Choi return home as early as possible,’’ ministry spokesman Shin Bong-kil said. Choi has been working at the post exchange of the U.S.-controlled airport in Mosul. In an attempt to communicate with Choi, the embassy sent an e-mail to him and confirmed that the message was received, Shin said.

After news of fellow worker Kim’s murder broke out on June 23, Choi was seeking to find a way out of Iraq to return home. With the threat of insurgency mounting ahead of the transfer of sovereignty to an interim Iraqi government, however, he had been isolated at a U.S. military base for about a week.

The news coincided with an unidentified rumor that in addition to Kim, other South Korean workers in Iraq might have been held captive by Islamic insurgents.

Meanwhile, Cana’s president faced allegations that he has not heeded the government’s repeated calls to take safety measures for his employees in the war-torn Middle Eastern nation.

After securing an intelligence tip on May 10 indicating Cana’s Christian staff members could fall victim to kidnappers, the South Korean embassy in Iraq strongly urged Kim on May 14 to evacuate his employees, according to a government official. It was about a month before Kim Sun-il’s kidnapping.

But the warning fell on deaf ears’, according to a government official who requested to remain anonymous.

Although the president of Cana visited the South Korean embassy in Iraq four times after he learned of Kim’s abduction, he remained tight-lipped about his employee’s whereabouts, the official added.

In the wake of the abduction and killing of Kim in Iraq, there are growing calls for South Koreans to take responsibility for their decisions to go to dangerous regions despite government warnings.

yoodh@koreatimes.co.kr