Family members cried out with joy and hugged one another as they were told that 19 South Korean hostages were to be released by the Taliban after almost six weeks in captivity in Afghanistan.

South Korean presidential spokesman Chun Ho-sun confirmed the reports, broadcast initially on Al Jazeera television, that the 19 hostages would be freed in exchange for the withdrawal of South Korean troops from Afghanistan before the end of the year.

After the initial euphoria, the relatives later apologised to the nation for the trouble that the Saemmul Church had caused to South Korea by sending the team of young and mainly female Christian volunteers into one of the most dangerous countries in the world.

The team of medical volunteers originally numbered 23. In the six weeks since they were abducted from a main road south of Kabul last month, two male hostages were killed by captors, while two female members were released earlier in the month as a "gesture of goodwill".

The release of the remaining 19 hostages caps weeks of on-off negotiations between the Taliban and South Korean officials, which appeared in deadlock just days before.

"The families are rejoicing at the news. They are busy calling other family members and friends at the moment to pass on the news," Bang Yong-kyun, pastor at Saemmul Church, told Reuters.

"We knew the negotiation process was turning favourable, but we never thought it would happen so soon," a spokesman for the hostage families, Cha Sung-min, told reporters.
"When the announcement came out, there was a commotion in the room as everyone hugged each other."

Pastor Bang shared the excitement felt by all the relatives at the prospect of their loved one returning home.

"We will do what we weren't able to do during the incident. We found out that the everyday routines were the most precious moments. Eating breakfast together or having slices of fruit after dinner," he said.

"Those insignificant things are what we treasure the most."

Feelings among Christians in South Korea have been divided as to whether a team of missionaries so inexperienced as the Saemmul Church group should have ever been in a trouble hot spot like Afghanistan in the first place.

South Korea is the second largest supplier of missionaries to the world after the US. One church, which requested anonymity, said that it had previously had members in Afghanistan but had no plans to send any more missionaries to the country following the latest hostage crisis.

An editorial in the right-leaning Chosun Ilbo newspaper said, "Religious groups should realise once and for all that dangerous missionary and volunteer activities in Islamic countries including Afghanistan not only harm Korea's national objectives, but also put other Koreans under a tremendous amount of duress."

Family members of the hostages, meanwhile, stressed repeatedly that the volunteers were there to carry out aid work and not to convert the local Muslim population to Christianity.