Koreans Talk About Ordeal

"All I could think about was staying alive," said one of the South Korean aid workers released from captivity in Afghanistan yesterday. “Now that the tension is gone my body aches all over.” The group reunited in a Kabul hotel today and spoke to the South Korean media before boarding a plane for Dubai. Two ex-hostages apologized for the trouble caused by their six-week ordeal.

Some were stunned to learn that two of their fellow-captives had been killed—they said their Taliban captors had split them into groups and moved them about a dozen times, the AP reports.  A senior Afghan official said today that South Korea had paid ransom to the Taliban to win their release, a claim dismissed by the Korean government. (More Taliban stories.)