One of the two South Korean workers injured in an ambush on a highway near the Iraqi capital said Sunday their assailants had appeared to recognize them as South Koreans before attacking them.

In an interview after being hospitalized in a U.S. military hospital in LANDSTUHL, Germany Sunday, Im Jae-seok, 32, said all in all, the Iraqi insurgents targeted us as South Koreans.

Im and the other injured worker, Lee Sang-won, 41, arrived at a U.S. air base in Ramstein in southwestern Germany earlier in the day and were immediately taken to the U.S. military hospital in Landstuhl, about 5 kilometers south of Ramstein.

The two employees of Seoul-based Ohm Electric Co. left Baghdad Airport on Sunday morning after being treated at a U.S. military hospital in Balad, northeast of Baghdad, for about a week.

Two South Korean engineers were killed and two others injured in an ambush by Iraqi insurgents in Tikrit, north of Baghdad, as they were heading to a construction site for power transmission towers on Nov. 30th.

Im also said a Iraqi passenger car chased his car, driven by an Iraqi driver, on a two-lane road and fired about 40 bullets at Im's car on the first lane of the road.

The driver and the two other Koreans were shot to death immediately on the spot.