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TechnoratiABC ran retractions for the program on two of their television shows – “Good Morning America” and “20/20” – as well as their website to correct the problem.
The preacher and his lawyer, however, said that was not enough.
10. Korean Hostage Crisis
South Korea’s largest Christian organizations were forced to re-evaluate their overseas mission efforts after being harshly criticized by the international community for sending inexperienced Christian workers into a high-risk area in Afghanistan – resulting in what was the largest abduction of foreigners in the country since the fall of the Taliban regime in 2001.
On July 19, a team of 23 Christian volunteers was abducted by Taliban militants as their luxury bus drove through Afghanistan’s insurgency-prone Ghazni province.
Over the course of the hostages’ nearly six weeks of captivity, two male captives were killed. The leader of the group, Bae Hyung-kyu, was found dead on July 25, and the body of 29-year-old Shim Sung-min was found July 30.
The remaining 21 workers were eventually released in a series of handovers in August after the Taliban and the South Korean government struck a deal that included the withdrawal of Korean troops from Afghanistan by the end of the year and Seoul promising to pull out and bar all Christian mission groups from Afghanistan.
The hostage crisis in Afghanistan caused much introspection in churches across South Korea – the world's second largest missionary sending nation (after the United States).
The East Asian nation, which has seen a dramatic rise in Christianity within just a few decades of the twentieth century, sends one missionary for every 4.2 congregations – placing it 11th in the world, according to Christianity Today (The U.S. does not rank in the top 10.). And of the estimated 17,000 South Korean Christian missionaries that have been sent abroad, many are in volatile regions.
South Korean missionaries are particularly prevalent in 10/40 Window nations that are hostile to Westerners.
After this year’s incident, however, some have been wondering if that should and/or will change.
HONORABLE MENTIONS
Other notable events in 2007 that came close to getting mentioned in the CP Top 10 include the debate over the “Jesus Tomb,” which most scholars – both Christian and secular – agreed was nothing extraordinary; the debate over the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA), which seeks to add “sexual orientation” to a list of federally protected classes under a 1964 act that prohibits job discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, sex or national origin; the Virginia Tech shootings, which resulted in the death of 33 people and marked the deadliest shooting rampage in U.S. history; and the preparations for the 2008 Summer Olympics to be held next year in China’s capital city, Beijing.
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