Reaction
South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun's National Security Council issued a statement condemning the killing. The South Korean Ministry of Information and Communication has banned the Kim Sun-il murder video and is trying to prevent it from being spread. The unedited video was available on the website Ogrish.com during the summer of 2004. The website received DDoS attacks as a result of hosting the footage.
US President George W. Bush condemned the killers, saying: "The free world cannot be intimidated by the brutal actions of these barbaric people."
Reports and editorials in South Korea's press reflected despair at the death of the hostage Kim Sun-il in Iraq, but also defiance towards the kidnappers. South Korean TV stations interrupted their schedules when Mr Kim's body was discovered and subsequently broadcast special rolling news programmes. "Kim Sun-il killed - body identified" was the headline in the independent daily Donga Ilbo. "Kim Sun-il ends up dead" was how the popular daily JoongAng Ilbo reported it. In Korea, thousands of citizens rallied against the troops going to Iraq, and to express anger about Kim´s murder, they burned portraits of the mastermind of his killing, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. The South Korean government eventually passed a law barring passport issuance for 1-3 years to Koreans who "damage national prestige"; the law was interpreted as an attempt to curtail Christian missionaries, especially after the 2007 South Korean hostage crisis in Afghanistan.
Read more about this topic: Kim Sun-il
Famous quotes containing the word reaction:
“In contrast to revenge, which is the natural, automatic reaction to transgression and which, because of the irreversibility of the action process can be expected and even calculated, the act of forgiving can never be predicted; it is the only reaction that acts in an unexpected way and thus retains, though being a reaction, something of the original character of action.”
—Hannah Arendt (1906–1975)
“Sole and self-commanded works,
Fears not undermining days,
Grows by decays,
And, by the famous might that lurks
In reaction and recoil,
Makes flames to freeze, and ice to boil.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“More and more, when faced with the world of men, the only reaction is one of individualism. Man alone is an end unto himself. Everything one tries to do for the common good ends in failure.”
—Albert Camus (1913–1960)