BERLIN, July 25 (UPI) -- Westerners in Afghanistan are under an increasing terror threat: On Wednesday, one of 23 South Korean hostages was reportedly killed as an ultimatum for his life ran out, and a Danish journalist was briefly abducted. Moreover, two Germans were abducted last week -- one of them is dead, with the German government currently in talks to save the life of the remaining hostage.

On Wednesday morning, first reports of a new kidnapping surfaced: An unidentified journalist and his translator had gone missing in Afghanistan.

The editor of the German news magazine Stern wrote later that morning in an e-mail message to his staff that Christoph Reuter, a well-known Middle East and Afghanistan expert who has written a book on suicide bombers and regularly contributes to the magazine, couldn't be reached. He was apparently touring Afghanistan.

"We are very worried" that Reuter was the kidnapped journalist, wrote Thomas Osterkorn, Stern's editor in chief.

But when the journalist was released later Wednesday, Spiegel Online said the man was actually TV journalist from Denmark Khwaja Najibullah, of Afghan origin.

The latest abduction scare demonstrates how severely the German public and the media react to bad news from Afghanistan.

On July 18 two German engineers working on reconstruction projects were kidnapped in Wardak province, southwest of the capital Kabul, and one of the men died two days later. He was suffering from diabetes, and reports said he had a heart attack. However, the dead body was also pierced by several gun bullets -- the Taliban said they executed him because the German government did not pull out its troops from Afghanistan.

The remaining hostage is still in the hands of his kidnappers, but a special team of the German Foreign Ministry is working with Afghan government officials to get the man, who reportedly has been severely weakened because of the harsh conditions of the abduction, released as quickly as possible.

Kidnappings are nothing new to the government of German Chancellor Angela Merkel: Several people were kidnapped over the past two years in Iraq. Most of them have returned home unharmed. It was speculated that Berlin paid large sums of ransom, a rumor that may have triggered other abductions, observers say.

In Afghanistan, however, sheer terror at the moment seems to be worth more than money.

The NATO-led International Security Assistance Force and the U.S.-led anti-terror mission Operation Enduring Freedom are trying to win a battle against the Taliban that is becoming increasingly uphill, last but not least because of a rising number of terror attacks and kidnappings.

A group of 23 Korean church volunteers is still in the hands of the Taliban as an ultimatum for the life of the hostages was running out Wednesday and a yet-unconfirmed report says one was killed. The Taliban wants to pressure Kabul into releasing captured Taliban leaders, but Afghan President Hamid Karzai has pledged not to swap prisoners for hostages again; when he did so in March to free an Italian journalist, he came under severe fire.

"It is a strategy of the Taliban to target journalists and foreigners from the West as a way exert pressure on governments (in Europe)," Michael Lueders, a German Afghanistan expert, said Tuesday. "The aim of the kidnappers is to end the Western engagement in Afghanistan. ... It is very clearly an 'Iraqization' of the situation in Afghanistan."

Germany's government over the past few days has stood fast by its Afghanistan commitment. Merkel, Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier and Defense Minister Franz Josef Jung have all made statements to keep the German soldiers in Afghanistan.

More than 3,000 Bundeswehr troops are stationed with ISAF, mainly in the relatively peaceful northern provinces. Germany has led the Provincial Reconstruction Teams in the north and has been very successful in building up infrastructure, schools and other municipal institutions.

Yet after the recent abductions and a large suicide bombing in a busy market square in Kunduz that killed three German soldiers, the popularity of the mission has sunken to an all-time low. Weeks before the suicide bombing, German aid workers were killed in an ambush.

Germany's population is traditionally pacifist and uneasy about participating in casualty-heavy missions. In 2003 Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder was re-elected in part because he promised to keep German soldiers out of Iraq.

Germany's contribution to ISAF and OEF is up for parliamentary renewal this fall, and observers already predict a controversial debate.

"The pressure is rising on German politicians to pull out of Afghanistan," Lueders said over the weekend.

On Wednesday, he added that only the big cities are controlled by the international forces, while the mountains and the countryside are in rebels' hands.

"(NATO) is in a war that can't be won," he stated.