Chilling; Illuminating: Kim Sun-Il

David at In Search of Utopia (good blog if you haven't yet checked it out) points us to this post about beheaded South Korean translator Kim Sun-Il at Bear Left on Unnamed Road:

They pithed him like a steer. But first Kim Sun-Il's Al Qaeda captors bound and blindfolded him, taunted and threatened him in a language he could not understand with a malice that needed no translation.

They wanted him to suffer. More than that, they wanted the world to suffer, to watch in helpless outrage his pleas for improbable mercy taped in the waning hours of a pitiful prison existence.

Yet the tape of his torment demonstrated something Kim Sun-Il's captors did not appreciate; something that free peoples understand and that despots invariably ignore: the value of an individual life.

It showed that you can kill a man or rob him of his freedom but that your power over his flesh won't erase his thirst for liberty.
It showed that the sacrifice of one man for the "crimes" of a state cannot purify disdain for his personal culpability. It showed that democracy enshrines the rights of individuals, while demagoguery eschews them.

It showed that even at knifepoint, at the end of his days, a man clings passionately to the conviction that his own life matters. It showed that you can move a man to tears; likewise, a nation but that tears shed for tyranny can water the budding seeds of nascent democracy. All this the world saw in Kim Sun-Il's plight—and more.

I concur with David: it's a powerful piece of writing, almost as powerful as the images and words of Kim himself. He still haunts my dreams and quiet moments. And he reminds me that in this War on Terror, there are many Kims we don't know about, on all sides.