Left adrift

Men aboard the fishing vessel Dongwon have been held hostage on their ship off the coast of Somalia for months.

A Korean reporter recently managed to visit the ship and talk to both the Korean hostages and their local captors. She says the hostages are angry at the Korean government for, in their view, not doing more to win their release.

"What is the government up to?" they ask.

Meanwhile, Korean foreign minister Ban Ki-moon won an informal straw poll on who gets to be the next secretary-general at the United Nations.

(Hankyoreh Geurimpan, 26 July 2006)