By Park Song-wu
Staff Reporter

Kwon Chin-ho, National Security Advisor to President Roh Moo-hyun, told lawmakers on Tuesday that more abductions and murders of South Koreans in Iraq are highly likely.

``We can’t exclude the possibility of a second kidnapping and murder case involving South Koreans in Iraq, even though we will do our best to prevent it,’’ he said on the third and final day of a National Assembly hearing into the death of Kim Sun-il.

Kim, an Arabic language interpreter, was beheaded by Islamic insurgents in Iraq on June 22.

Kwon’s testimony came a day after South Korea’s Iraq-bound military unit held a farewell ceremony at a base in Kwangju, Kyonggi Province.

Lawmakers expressed their concern that some South Korean citizens are still staying in Iraq for business purposes, and others moving to the Kurdish-controlled northern Iraqi town of Irbil, where South Korea’s ``Zayitun’’ unit will be stationed.

Kwon explained that all the South Korean nationals in Irbil are currently staying in a military camp. He said the government is continually urging South Koreans residing in Baghdad to leave the country.

He also asked civilians to refrain from entering the war-torn country. ``But there are still many South Korean people who are going to Iraq,’’ Kwon said. ``I will check security measures once again for their safety in Iraq.’’

A day earlier, Rep. Woo Won-shik of the Uri Party warned that an unidentified terrorist group has formed to mount attacks against South Korean civilians and soldiers stationed in Iraq.

Meanwhile, an Iraqi counsel, who was involved in negotiations to win Kim’s release, claimed that the Seoul government’s immediate reiteration of its will to push ahead with its troop dispatch hastened Kim’s death.

``I didn’t want to make it a diplomatic issue and lower the chance of rescuing him,’’ she explained, when asked why she did not report Kim’s disappearance to the Korean Embassy in Baghdad.

Kim’s captors demanded South Korea scrap its plan to send additional troops to Iraq as a condition for his release. They presented a 24-hour deadline, but the Seoul government immediately reconfirmed its decision to stick to the troop deployment plan.

It was the first time for the Assembly to receive testimony from a foreigner since the hearing system was introduced in June 1988. The lawyer was identified only as `E’ for security reasons and she gave her testimony behind a screen, which was set up to prevent media from photographing her.

Reporters from the Associated Press failed to attend the hearing despite the request from the National Assembly.

But Hwang Sook-ju of the Board of Audit and Inspection told lawmakers that his agency had confirmed the AP’s Baghdad bureau didn’t make an inquiry to the Korean Embassy in Iraq over the videotape it had obtained on June 2 from an unidentified source in Baghdad.

In the videotape, Kim told his captor his name, age, job and home address in South Korea.

The AP claimed some of its reporters in Seoul had telephoned the foreign ministry on June 3 to check whether there was any case of a missing South Korean in Iraq with a name that sounded like Kim Sun-il.

But they didn’t mention the videotape in an effort to confirm independently whether a South Korean citizen was missing, the AP said.

Sources close to the AP bureau in Seoul have explained that in the videotape Kim did not look like a captive, so it curtailed its investigation, inviting criticism that it could otherwise have helped save Kim’s life.

Rep. Park Jin of the Grand National Party questioned the AP’s handling of the videotape, saying it broadcast an edited version, deleting critical information such as Kim’s home address, a day after Kim’s death was confirmed.

im@koreatimes.co.kr