South Korean hostage Kim Sun-il, who had been held captive by Islamic militants since Thursday, has been killed by his captors.

The Arabic satellite network, Al Jazeera, reported at dawn Wednesday that it had received a videotape showing Kim being beheaded by the al Qaeda-linked group Monotheism and Jihad, but stopped short of saying when Kim was killed.

Al Jazeera did not air the scene of the beheading, but did show five hooded men standing behind Kim who was kneeling, blindfolded and wearing an orange jumpsuit. The tape showed one of the armed men reading a statement and gesturing with his right hand while another captor had a large knife slipped in his belt.

One of the masked men said the beheading was a message intended for the Korean people, saying, in his words, "this is what your hands have committed. Your army has not come here for the sake of Iraqis, but for cursed America."

Shortly after Al Jazeera's report, Foreign Ministry spokesman Shin Bong-kil said in a statement that Kim's body was found by the U.S. military some 35 kilometers west of Baghdad on a road towards Fallujah at 5:20 p.m. Iraqi time. His body was transported to a U.S. military morgue in Baghdad.

Kim, a 33-year-old employee of a South Korean trading company providing supplies to the U.S. military in Iraq, was abducted last Thursday.
Kim's kidnappers had initially threatened to kill him near dawn Tuesday unless the South Korean government cancelled its plan to dispatch additional troops to Iraq. The Seoul government turned down the demand, reaffirming its decision to dispatch 3,000 soldiers starting in August.

Earlier on Tuesday, the government had dispatched a delegation to Iraq as part of diplomatic efforts to negotiate Kim's release.