Missionaries from Korea overzealous??

Two of the Korean hostages have been released by Taliban yesterday. Since their kidnapping, their careless disregard of their own safety has been criticised by many. This article discussed whether their approach is overzealous. This is an excerpt.

South Korea had over 16,000 evangelical missionaries abroad as of the end of 2006, the second biggest source of missionaries after the United States.

Korean Christians are passionate evangelists, but what they don't have is a careful, reasoned strategy, insiders say. Since Christianity entered Korea 100 years ago this year through Pyongyang, now the North Korean capital, the number of churches in Korea has mushroomed as have the number of missionaries. But their inexperience often left them ill-prepared and ignorant of rules and pra ctices in regions where proselytizing is prohibited by law, they said.

The captives, mostly in their 20s and 30s from Saemmul Community Church just south of Seoul, overlooked many critical points that might have saved them from their ordeal, government officials said. The volunteers were on a 10-day good-will aid trip to Afghanistan during their summer vacations, They did not report to the local police when traveling from Kabul to Kandahar, the former stronghold of the Taliban where security is a problem. Their bus was of a type that the locals knew would be used for foreigners. In addition, they ignored warnings from the Foreign Ministry and National Intelligence Service that they would be in danger in the war-ripped region...

"Korean missionaries have strong emotional fervor but they are weak in strategy," he said. "Missionary work is about humbling ourselves, listening to what locals say, what other missionaries there say ... We use the term 'spiritual war' but that doesn't mean we wage war against local residents. We cannot be combative delivering God's words."...

"If they identify themselves as Christians, put on a placard that says they are from a church, they're making themselves perfect targets of terror attacks... If they are good, they naturally draw people. We can't say, 'Believe in Jesus or go to hell'," Kim said.

Like many others, the Yoido church sends out full-time missionaries, mostly professionals like doctors or engineers, to Afghanistan and other Islamic countries, but they operate in a subtle way, he said. He said they never put on a religious label but try to mingle with locals as "good neighbors." The Yoido church has 600 full-time missionaries in 55 countries and sends out about 1,500 short-term missionaries every summer for a week or two.

He said it's a "top secret" how many missionaries it has now in Afghanistan for security reasons.
Still, aggressive evangelism is a key practice of many Korean churches, which believe their current prosperity flows from the work of Western missionaries who came here during Japan's colonial rule or the Korean War. The believe they should emulate and pay back those missionaries, some of whom were martyred, through service to third world countries...

"It's a theological question whether aggressive proselytizing is right or wrong. Many say that Christians should try more to understand and sympathize with locals rather than to convert them, but it's not easy to say aggressive evangelism is wrong because that's a fundamental denial of what the decree says," he said, "But we will have a big debate about this. That's for sure."

God said we should be brave, not foolish. Martyrs should only die because they have to, NOT because they want to or mistakes that can be easily corrected.

I did not pray for their release, (I am not sure if that is God's will, how will God sort out this problem humans created?), I just prayed for their peace even when they are being held captive.