The murder of a second South Korean hostage held captive by Taleban militants provoked grief-stricken outrage in his home country yesterday and prompted calls for the United States to intervene in the crisis.

The office of President Roh condemned the murder and called for “an immediate halt to these heinous acts of killing innocent people” in order to press demands that South Korea cannot meet.

The death on Monday of Shim Sung Min followed the expiry of the latest deadline imposed by the Taleban hostage-takers, who are demanding the release of eight prisoners from Afghan jails.

The discovery of Mr Shim’s body, riddled with bullets and tossed into a side street of a town 90 miles (150km) south of Kabul, caused family members of the remaining 21 hostages held by the Afghan militants to collapse in grief. Mr Shim, 29, who recently left his job to pursue volunteer work, had not told his family that he was going to Afghanistan. Only hours before his group were kidnapped he called his mother to tell her not to worry.

The crisis, now into its second week, has become an unbearable agony for those watching it unfold in their churches and community centres, many of whom now expect the killing of hostages to carry on.

Although negotiations for the safe return of the hostages continue, the Afghan Government has resisted the temptation to yield to the Taleban’s demands and turn the business of hostage-taking into “an industry”.

A purported spokesman for the Taleban said that the Afghan and South Korean governments had negotiated as “cheats and liars” and set a new deadline of today before the killings begin again.

Speaking for the families, the mother of one of the 18 women hostages called for the US to help to resolve the issue but urged that intervention should not take the form of a military raid.

Unable to hold back tears, Shim Jin Pyo, the murdered man’s father, begged the Taleban to free the other hostages, urging them to “understand the meaning of true love and volunteerism on this occasion”.

The news of Mr Shim’s brutal death came only nine hours after the arrival in Seoul of the body of the Rev Bae Hyung Kyu, the man who had led the South Korean missionary group to Afghanistan to perform volunteer medical work.

Where the plight of the evangelist hostages had previously divided South Koreans – many used internet message boards to condemn the group for travelling against government advice – yesterday’s death united and galvanised the national mood. Internet portals, no longer a forum for antipathy towards the hostages, were brought to a standstill by a deluge of condolence messages.

Much has been made of Mr Shim’s heroic family background. His late grandfather was a famous pro-independence fighter when Korea fell under Japanese rule in the early part of the last century.

The mood of Korea’s large online community was also affected by what is believed to be genuine footage released by the captors of seven of the women hostages wearing headscarves and staring blankly at the floor of an unidentified cell.

A spokesman for the presidential Blue House said that it “would not sit idly by and tolerate any further acts of harm towards innocent Koreans and holds the perpetrators responsible”.

The Organisation of the Islamic Conference yesterday added its weight to the calls for the release of the Koreans, emphasising that the act of kidnapping was “un-Islamic”.

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