Earlier Tuesday, a negotiator who met with Kim's captors said Kim was still alive and talks were proceeding. But later in the day, Al Jazeera satellite television broadcast another video of the group announcing it had killed Kim.
The video showed Kim kneeling in front of five hooded men, one of whom had a large knife tucked in his belt. A black flag in the background proclaimed: "There is no God but Allah, and Muhammad is his messenger."
Kim, wearing an orange jumpsuit that resembled those worn by inmates at the U.S. detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, rocked back and forth in apparent agony. He appeared to be sobbing.
One of his captors shouted: "Stop lying! Your soldiers are not here for Iraqis, but for the damned Americans!"
Kim worked as an interpreter for Gana General Trading Co., a South Korean supplier to the U.S. military.
Kim's decapitation followed the beheadings of American engineer Paul M. Johnson Jr. last week in Saudi Arabia and Nicholas Berg, an American businessman, in Iraq last month.
The latest video on Al Jazeera didn't show Kim's execution. The TV station said it withheld that footage because "it could be highly distressing to our audience."
Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt, the chief spokesman for the U.S. military, said it appeared that Kim's body had been thrown from a vehicle.
"The man had been beheaded, and the head was recovered with the body," he said.
It was about 2 a.m. in South Korea when Foreign Ministry spokesman Shin Bong Kil told a Seoul news conference that "it breaks my heart to convey this tragic news" of Kim's death.
This morning, Kim's mother, Shin Young Ja, collapsed upon hearing the news. She was later shown trying to tear up a plastic Iraqi flag that the family had been displaying to show support for the Iraqi people.
Other family members sobbed and hugged one another, averting their eyes from the television cameras.
"How could he be dead when only yesterday the government said he was alive?" demanded his stunned father, Kim Jong Kyu.
South Koreans were touched by Kim's story. The only son of a struggling construction worker, Kim put himself through college and graduate school, obtaining degrees in Arabic and English and studying religion in hopes of becoming a missionary.
He took the job as an interpreter in Iraq with the hope of earning enough money to continue his studies.
