The Marmot’s Hole has the latest updates - he has access to Korean language news, sites and well as english news services.

He looks clearly at the clash between cultures, countries, the reaction in Korea…

Then there’s this photo taken by the group on their departure from Korea. Speechless.  The site also details the group’s long passage to Afghanistan (note: this is on a blog site, and I can’t confirm if the chronology is accurate) — the Foreign Ministry warned Bundang Saemmul Church several times and even canceled the group’s airline tickets the first time they tried to buy them (leading the church to threaten to sue the state).  Upon learning of their departure, the ministry even sent a chartered plane to bring the group back, which they refused.  The church also apparently told the Foreign Ministry to stop worrying about them since the group would leave behind wills.

…The familes of the hostages, meanwhile, have issued a statement apologizing for the distress they’ve caused the nation, and that they understood the government was working hard to bring them home.  In the press conference that followed, family members stressed the fact that the team went to Afghanistan to do medical work, NOT engage in religious activities.  The head of the family group, the brother of hostage Cha Seong-min, said, “Our family members went to Afghanistan as members of a volunteer group, not as part of a church.” He also said the group sponsoring the visit was not Bundang Saemmul Church, but the Korea Foundation for World Aid, a Christian relief NGO that does a lot of work with North Korea. He also said that missionary work in Afghanistan would have been impossible because of language difficulties. I don’t know what to think, or more specifically, I don’t know what to think about the clashing claims as to which organization put the trip together.

…The Seoul Sinmun (Korean) reports that the hostages’ families have been hurt by all the nasty comments being made by netizens. In particular, with some rather ill-advised photos taken by one of the hostages floating around, the netizens onslaught has been pretty fierce, with the Bundang Saemmul Church homepage, the Korea Foundation for World Aid, and the Cyworld blog of one of the hostages being particularly targeted.

…An Afghan serving an an intermediary between Korean negotiators and the Taliban said Tuesday that the kidnappers are asking for US$100,000 to allow Korean officials to see the hostages.

…Meanwhile, Yonhap (Korean) — citing an Afghan source — reports that the health of some of the hostages may be deteriorating.

I know what I feel, it’s much harder to know what I think. The Koreans are middle class, well educated and although the Afghan government has made it clear over and over they do not want aid workers in war zones, someone is encouraging (or duping) them to to into the country.  I wonder what this group understood what they were going into, it appears their government understood the dangers to them, Afghanis and NATO. Short term aid, short term ‘missionary’ work (which is how Afghani’s see their presence) puts so many people in danger, causes anguish for families, and undermines the fragile Afghan governments attempts to build coalitions with it’s people.  Flooding Afghanistan with well meaning aid workers/missionaries at this stage is not going to solve the problems they willingly and perhaps niavely went to help ‘fix’.