SEOUL (AFP) – South Korea stood firm yesterday on its pledge to deploy thousands of troops to Iraq as an Islamic group threatened to behead a terrified Korean hostage unless the plan is scrapped.

Iraqi militants said Sunday they would behead 33-year-old Kim Sun-Il within 24 hours unless plans to dispatch thousands of South Korean troops to Iraq were abandoned.

The threat was delivered in a video tape screened on Al-Jazeera television and repeated several times on South Korean TV networks.

A terrified Kim was seen pleading for his life and begging the South Korean Government to reverse its troop dispatch plan.

“Korean soldiers, get out of here. I don’t want to die. I don’t want to die,” Kim said in English on the video footage seen here.

One of the hostage-takers was shown delivering the ultimatum in Arabic.

“Do not send any more troops to Iraq or we will send you the head of this Korean and it will be followed, God willing, by the heads of your soldiers,” said the man, flanked by two other hostage-takers, all wearing scarves to hide their faces.

“We give you 24 hours starting from Sunday June 20, 2004” to agree to the demand, he said. It was unclear when the deadline would expire, officials said here.

The militants said they belonged to the Tawhid wa al-Jihad (Unification and Holy War), a group led by Al-Qaeda operative Abu Mussab al-Zarqawi, whom Washington blames for a long list of attacks in Iraq since the fall of Saddam Hussein.

The footage was released two days after an American hostage was beheaded by Al-Qaeda extremists in Saudi Arabia when a 72-hour deadline ran out for the release of hundreds of militants detained in the oil-rich kingdom.

Yonhap news agency said Monday that two Uri Party representatives had sent a video to Al-Jazeera urging the captors to free their hostage.

According to them, the channel plans repeatedly to televise their appeal.

“Our message has been recorded on videotape here, and it has already been sent to the Arab TV network in Qatar,” party Representatives Song Young-kil and Yun Ho-jung said.

During the 10-minute appeal, they stressed that “The South Korean troops have been dispatched to Iraq to help promote peace and reconstruct the country.”

Kim was abducted Thursday near Fallujah along with several other people, according to Kim Choon-Ho, president of the South Korean company for which Kim works as a translator.

Those abducted with him included employees of US company KBR, a part of the Halliburton group, Kim’s employer said in an interview with Yonhap.

He was being held along with about 10 others, including a European journalist, Kim was quoted as saying.

South Korea is to start deploying some 3,000 troops to the north of Iraq in August on a relief and rehabilitation mission, making Seoul the largest US coalition partner in Iraq after Britain.