The authorities in South Korea say they are using all diplomatic measures to try to free one of their citizens who is being held captive by militants in Iraq.
The insurgents have threatened to behead the hostage if South Korea goes ahead with a plan to send 3,000 more troops to Iraq.
The Islamic group responsible for the abduction has made a video-taped threat to execute the civilian hostage unless South Korea cancels its plans to send more troops to Iraq.
The captive, 33-year-old Kim Sung Il, went to Iraq last year as a translator for a trading company.
The South Korean foreign minister, Ban Ki-moon, has not ruled out negotiating with the kidnappers.
However, he said they had no reason to object to his country's role in Iraq, which was a peaceful one.
Bodies of four soldiers discovered in Iraq
Meanwhile, the bodies of four US soldiers have been discovered at a building site in the town of Ramadi, west of Baghdad.
It is unclear when the soldiers were killed. Their bodies were sprawled on the ground, surrounded by scattered equipment.
The US military has not commented on the matter.
And four Iraqis were killed in a roadside bomb blast this morning in the town of Gayara near Mosul in the north of the country.
They are reported to have been hit by shrapnel from the blast.
Three other Iraqi citizens in the same convoy were injured.
