This is a tough call:

“Shocked by the killing of a second South Korean hostage in Afghanistan and weary from the 13-day-old crisis, South Korea on Tuesday urged the American and Afghan governments to show ‚Äúflexibility‚Äù over Taliban demands for the release of imprisoned militants.

The government appeal — coupled with a growing frustration among South Koreans over what they say is a lack of cooperation from the United States — came hours after the Afghan police found the body of a second South Korean hostage.

A self-described Taliban spokesman said the man was killed Monday because the Afghan government had not released the Taliban prisoners.

“The government is well aware of how the international community deals with these kinds of abduction cases,” Cheon Ho-seon, a spokesman for President Roh Moo-hyun of South Korea, said in a statement on Tuesday. “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.”

Ever since the Taliban kidnapped 23 volunteer aid workers on July 19, Mr. Roh’s government has been caught between two uncompromising forces. The Taliban have insisted on a hostage-and-prisoner swap, but the Afghan government says that will only lead to more kidnappings.

“We shouldn’t encourage kidnapping by actually accepting their demands,” a spokesman for the Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, told reporters Tuesday, according to Reuters.

Qari Yousef Ahmadi, who described himself as a Taliban spokesman, said the militants would kill more hostages if Kabul did not release prisoners by noon Wednesday.

“It might be a man or a woman,” Mr. Ahmadi told The Associated Press. “It might be one. It might be two, four. It might be all of them.”

The hostage whose body was found Monday was identified by Seoul as Shim Sung-min, a 29-year-old former information technology worker. He had volunteered for a South Korean church group’s aid mission to the war-torn country. The body of the group’s leader, Bae Hyung-kyu, who, like Mr. Shim, had been shot to death, was found last Wednesday.

“We cannot contain our anger at this merciless killing and strongly condemn this,” said Cho Hee-yong, a spokesman for the South Korean Foreign Ministry.

But the South Korean government also expressed frustration over the deadlock in negotiations.

The Taliban demand “is not within the power of the Korean government because it doesn’t have any effective means to influence decisions of the Afghan government,” said Mr. Cheon. “The Korean government strongly condemns and urges an immediate end to these heinous acts of killing innocent people in order to press for demands that it can’t meet.”

The Koreans are in a tough spot, but they know that the rules have to remain in force. Can’t give in to these slugs. Saying that, we must get cracking and get the teams into to effect the rescue. There is no doubt in my military mind that they are doing this right now. The news reports of a rescue that broadcast this morning were no doubt to get the Taliban to move their captives thus making detection easier.

If the hostages - mostly korean women - are killed this would cause a hugh wave of anti-americanism in the South, where we can ill afford for it to grow.

Again, providing the captors bit on the rescue story, we need to have our eyes up in the air to find these people and get them to safety pronto.

If freaking Newsweek can talk to the bastards I’m sure we can get a bead on their location. Let’s move it!

We cannot alow these people to die by the hand of these cowards.