Pat Dollard | Young Americans

South Korea and relatives of 21 kidnapped Koreans appealed for U.S. help Tuesday, but Afghanistan said for the first time it will not release insurgent prisoners—the Taliban’s key demand to free the captives.

Afghan police found the body of the second hostage slain since the Christian church group was seized nearly two weeks ago; the group’s pastor was killed last week.

A purported Taliban spokesman, meanwhile, said some of the prisoners the militants want released are held at the U.S. base at Bagram.

The Taliban said more Koreans would die if its demands were not met by midday Wednesday. The militants have extended several previous deadlines without consequences, but killed 29-year-old Shim Sung-min on Monday after a deadline passed. His body, with a gunshot wound to the head, was found along a road in Andar district.

In South Korea, relatives and a civic group pleaded for more U.S. involvement, and the president’s office used more diplomatic language to prod the Americans.

“The government is well aware of how the international community deals with these kinds of abduction cases,” the president’s office said, an apparent reference to the U.S. policy of not negotiating with terrorists. “But it also believes that it would be worthwhile to use flexibility in the cause of saving the precious lives of those still in captivity and is appealing (to) the international community to do so.”

The civic group People’s Solidarity for Participatory Democracy said the U.S. was acting like it was watching “a fire across a river.”

It also questioned what South Korea had earned for helping Washington combat terrorism. Seoul has sent troops to Afghanistan and Iraq.

State Department spokesman Tom Casey said there is regular contact between U.S. and South Korean officials about the standoff, but would not comment on specifics.

President Hamid Karzai’s spokesman said officials were doing “everything we can” to secure the hostages’ release, but that freeing militant prisoners was not an option.

“As a principle, we shouldn’t encourage kidnapping by accepting their demands,” said Humayun Hamidzada.

In March, Karzai authorized freeing five captive Taliban fighters for the release of an Italian reporter. Karzai called the trade a one-time deal.

Qari Yousef Ahmadi, a purported Taliban spokesman, said eight prisoners must be released by midday Wednesday, and that some were held by the U.S. at Bagram.

“If the Kabul government does not release the Taliban prisoners, then we will kill after 12 o’clock,” Ahmadi said. “It might be a man or a woman … It might be one. It might be two, four. It might be all of them.”

In South Korea, the slain hostage’s father, Shim Jin-pyo, described his son as “chivalrous and warmhearted,” and wondered how the Taliban “could perpetrate this horrible thing.”

Kim Jung-ja, the mother of another hostage, said the U.S. should “give more active support to save the 21 innocent lives.”

The Taliban kidnapped the 23 Koreans—16 women and seven men—while they were riding a bus through Ghazni province on the Kabul-Kandahar highway on July 19. They are the largest group of foreign hostages taken in Afghanistan since the 2001 U.S.-led invasion that drove the Taliban from power.

The group’s church says they were in Afghanistan providing volunteer services, not doing missionary work.

(AP)