LOS ANGELES — How much might a human life be worth these days?
That's an utterly absurd question to answer with quantification, to be sure. But apparently it wasn't that tough an assessment for the pragmatic South Korean government. If press reports are correct, Seoul just dished out something like $2 million in Afghanistan to spring 19 of their citizens from Taliban captivity.
The ordeal started earlier this summer when 23 South Korean missionaries, ignoring government warnings, went to the war-torn nation. The Taliban, for whom Christian missionaries are not exactly welcome visitors, grabbed the lot of them and put two of the men to death right off the bat. Facing a furor of anxiety at home, the Roh Moo Hyun government was caught in a bind.