Korean Christians in Afghanistan
by Richardson ~ August 1st, 2006. Filed under: Central Asia, Korean Culture, Miscellaneous, Religion. These people just don’t give up, do they? You gotta admire their zeal (h/t Marshall Sana):
Nearly 900 Christians from South Korea are in Afghanistan to attend a peace festival despite their government’s warning that they can be attacked.The three-day event that starts in Kabul on Saturday comes amid an increase in violence, a foreign ministry official said in Seoul. [Snip]
Choi Han-woo, head of the Institute of Asian Culture and Development (IACD), which is sponsoring the event, had told Reuters last month that “the peace festival will not be dangerous. The Afghan government has welcomed our attendance at the event.” [Snip]
In 2004, some 2,000 South Korean Christians from IACD shrugged off government requests to avoid the Middle East during the Iraq war and went to Israel to join a peace march between the biblical cities of Bethlehem and Jerusalem.
None of them was attacked during their visit.
August 2nd, 2006 at 12:42 pm
If some Christians in Korea feel calling by the holy spirit to go to Afghanistan or Iraq then let them be. Sure it’s dangerous and all with potental to stir up trouble and worse become hostage. It’s not smart thing to do but it’s their choice and their “calling”.
August 2nd, 2006 at 2:38 pm
Per Chosun:
Afghanistan to Deport All Korean Evangelicals
Afghanistan’s President Hamid Karzai has ordered the “complete expulsion” of all Koreans who went there to take part in a “peace march” organized by an evangelical organization, the Foreign Ministry said Wednesday. Lee Joon-kyu, the ministry’s director general in charge of consular affairs, told KBS radio that Kabul informed the Korean Embassy of the decision on Tuesday.
A group of 35 Koreans who arrived at Kabul airport on Tuesday were the first to be stopped. A source with the Institute of Asian Culture and Development, a coalition of evangelical groups sponsoring the event, claimed a few Koreans were injured when Afghan police wielded metal clubs to subdue them, but a Foreign Ministry official quoted a staffer who was present as saying no one was struck, and one individual suffered an abrasion when they resisted.
Choi Han-woo, the head of the IACD, claimed Afghan local authorities and people were “cooperating greatly.” “The state of law and order in Afghanistan has grown much better in the last four years,” he said. A government official here said, “Maybe the regional authorities have agreed to the event, but the anti-government terrorist organizations like al-Qaeda and the Taliban have not.” He warned, there have been 1,100 terrorism-related casualties in the last three months alone, and lawlessness in the war-torn country is the worst it has been since the U.S.-led invasion in 2001.