Some of the South Korean Christian aid workers held hostage by Afghanistan’s Taliban said on Wednesday they were beaten and threatened with death to try to make them convert to Islam.

They also offered a fresh apology to the South Korean government and people over what was seen here as a reckless trip to a war-torn nation.

“We were beaten with a tree branch or kicked around. Some kidnappers threatened us with death at gunpoint to force us to follow them in chanting their Islamic prayer for conversion,” Je Chang-Hee, 38, told a news conference.

‘Beaten many times
“I was beaten many times. They pointed a rifle and bayonet at me and tried to force me to convert,” he added, without specifying whether anyone recited such a prayer.

Je, who quit an IT ompany in June to enter a graduate theology school, served as an English interpreter and engaged in volunteer work at a hospital in Afghanistan.

Yoo Jung-Hwa, a 39-year-old English tutor, also said she feared for her life.

“They aimed a machine gun at us in a dug-out. On the last day of captivity, they told us they would let us go if we converted to Islam. I could not even cry for fear of irritating them.”

The 16 female and seven male aid workers were taken hostage on July 19 as they travelled by bus through insurgency-plagued southern Afghanistan.

The guerrillas killed two of the men to press demands for the release of jailed insurgents.