sailors = poor; religion not essential to hostage taking

missionaries = middle class; wealthy church; religion critical factor in abduction

removing the obvious overtones of faith, it’s like a lot of Korea, a class issue. nothing more.

and then, lastly, there is that pesky matter of the 24 people who are not of the Han. to get involved in something potentially messy to free 4 poor boys from a poor company and not also attempt to free those ‘other’ people would be just a little more international criticism than ol’ So-Ko can handle at the moment what with bending over for the Taliban and Crazy Mr Kim from the North.

The handling of a similar Somali incident last year involved the boat owner paying a ransom of $800K to rescue a crew that included Chinese, Indonesians, and Vietnamese.

http://www.upi.com/NewsTrack/T.....rint_view/

AND NOTHING gets the wheels greased faster and political boners harder than the idea of a bunch of gun wielding savages from a ‘lesser’ dogma preventing cutie-pie well-to-do girls who come from happy Christian home who are being prevented from eating and shitting properly—men dig that crap. and politicians are mostly men. it’s a silly damsel in distress parable.

those sailors would stand a much better chance if they had stopped off in Thailand first for a few “operations” to tie the crew over for the long nights at sea.

all this being said, i’ve got sympathy in my little toe for those guys in Somalia than i could ever muster in my entire life for those idiots people taken hostage in Afghanistan.

i hope someone will take their (the sailors) plight seriously.

Was there any reasoning behind the figure of $57,000, or was it just random stuff?

the wife of one of the hostages stating “They sent a presidential envoy and the chief of the NIS (to Afghanistan) and freed them in 42 days. But why are they leaving the crew members, who btw went there to earn a living, in captivity for 150 days?”

sailors = poor; religion not essential to hostage taking

missionaries = middle class; wealthy church; religion critical factor in abduction

removing the obvious overtones of faith, it’s like a lot of Korea, a class issue. nothing more.

and i’m quite certain that if Mr. Ahn had more wealth that would kick something into gear. but likely, the two trawlers are the only ones he owns …

and then, lastly, there is that pesky matter of the 24 people who are not of the Han. to get involved in something potentially messy to free 4 poor boys from a poor company and not also attempt to free those ‘other’ people would be just a little more international criticism than ol’ So-Ko can handle at the moment what with bending over for the Taliban and Crazy Mr Kim from the North.

deciding to “‘forget’ about the hostages and hope that the problem will go away” is a common theme of the ruling class here when people of “lesser means” get in a jam.