The World Council of Churches (WCC) general secretary Rev Dr Samuel Kobia has urged South Korean President Lee Myung-bak to "take urgent measures to strengthen inter-Korean relationships without any pre-conditions".

While the worldwide communion he heads up is still mired in dispute, Archbishop of Canterbury Dr Rowan Williams is encouraging Anglicans to grasp a larger version of peace by backing a major conference focussed on the situation in Korea.

Peace initiatives and reconciliation on the Korean Peninsula will be the foci of a worldwide Anglican peace conference on 14-20 November, when more than 150 Anglican leaders, ecumenical guests and others will meet in South Korea.

In a gesture of support toward the families of the Korean hostages being held by the Taliban in Afghanistan, the Rev Dr Samuel Kobia, general secretary of the World Council of Churches (WCC) and a Methodist minister from Kenya, visited them yesterday while on a trip to Korea.

In recent years South Korean churches have come to be known for their spectacular growth rate, the fastest of any Asian nation. Less known is the role Korea's churches have played in working for peace and reunification of their divided country.

The World Council of Churches has denounced the killing of a second Korean Christian hostage in Afghanistan, while Korean Presbyterians have called on the US and Afghanistan to negotiate the freeing of the hostages with the Taliban.

The killing of a second Korean Christian hostage in Afghanistan has led the Presbyterian Church in the Republic of Korea (PROK) to make an urgent call for prayer among the world's different Christian communities.

The National Council of Churches in Korea has said that all "missionary activity in Afghanistan, where abductions and dangers to life continue, must be stopped," says the Japanese online edition of JoongAng Daily.

Korean and American Korean Methodist leaders say that the aftermath of the awful Virginia Tech killings should be the search for healing not revenge.

Constructive engagement to deal with threats like nuclear proliferation is better than aggression ‚Ä' that is the message of the head of a global association of Protestant, Orthodox, Anglican and indigenous churches concerning developments involving North Korea.