[Courtesy of the presidential Blue House]
SEOUL -- South Korea's presidential office responded to a plea from a man kidnapped by an armed group in Libya, saying his homeland and President Moon Jae-in have never forgotten him, a day after a video showing the man and three Filipino workers sitting in a desert was published.
"His country and his president have never forgotten him," presidential spokesman Kim Eui-kyeom said in a statement, adding that on the first day of kidnapping, Moon asked the government to do its best "with all its capabilities" for the release of the unidentified man.
For a rescue operation, South Korea is closely cooperating with Libya, the Philippines and the United States, the spokesman said. "For any information related to an armed group that has kidnapped him, we are even listening to the silence of the desert."
On Moon's order, South Korea's anti-piracy military unit stationed in the Gulf of Aden had been dispatched to the coast of Libya, "responding to local circumstances," the spokesman said.
The Cheonghae unit with commandoes aboard has been operating near the coast of Somalia to protect civilian vessels. In January 2011, Cheonghae rescued a South Korean chemical tanker and crew members held hostage by Somali pirates in an operation that left eight pirates killed.
An armed militia abducted the four at a water plant in Jabal Hasouna in Libya on July 6, the South's foreign ministry said Wednesday when a video clip posted on the Facebook account of 218 News, a Libyan media company, showed them calling for help. Their identities were not disclosed.
"Please help me, president... our country South Korea," a middle-aged Korean man with an overgrown beard spoke in broken English to a camera, sitting in a desert with three other victims. Behind them, a hooded man sat with a Russian RPK machine gun.
"I am too much suffering. I have problem. My wife, my children, too much headache every day regarding me," the Korean man said. "We don't have anything. We don't have food, we don't have medicine. Please help us. We are already suffering," a Filipino worker said in the video.
No group has claimed responsibility yet for the kidnapping of the four men, who reportedly had been working as technicians at a water plant. A South Korean company was once involved in the Great Man-made River Project building a waterway across the Libyan desert.
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