Three South Koreans were freed on Saturday a day after they were kidnapped by armed tribesmen in Egypt’s Sinai peninsula when clan elders negotiated their release, officials here and in Egypt said.

“We were not assaulted, or treated badly,” said Pastor Lee Min-song, 53, one of the freed Koreans. “We are all well.”

The other two freed South Koreans are Lee Jong-dal, 62, and Mo Jong-mun, 59. They were on a 10-day Christian pilgrimage to Egypt, Israel and Jordan.

The three and their Egyptian tour guide were kidnapped on Friday by tribesmen wanting to pressure Egyptian authorities to release their detained relatives. The abduction took place around 30 kilometers from the sixth-century St. Catherine’s Monastery, close to where two Americans were taken last week.

In both incidents, tribesmen took some of the passengers from a tour vehicle while leaving others behind.

The Korean government had asked Cairo to help win the release of the Korean captives soon after their abduction.

The head of security in South Sinai Maj. Gen. Mohammed Naguib said security officials and tribal elders negotiated their release with the captor, Ali Dikheil, who he said was imprisoned for drug and weapons crimes but broke out during the popular uprising that toppled President Hosni Mubarak on Feb. 11, 2011.

The captor had demanded the release of a 29-year-old tribesman detained for the armed robbery of a bank, officials here said. It is not clear whether the armed robber was freed.

It was the latest in a series of kidnappings in Sinai. The peninsula has seen a surge in lawlessness over the last year, but abducted tourists are rarely harmed.

Mo, one of the Korean captives, said she and her colleagues were treated well by the kidnappers.

“They told us that they were fighting againt the Egyptian government,” he said. “They apologized to us for the abduction.”

Two American women kidnapped last week said afterward that their captors served them tea and dried fruit.

The Seoul government raised their alert on travel to the Sinai Peninsula from level two to three, one notch shy of a full travel ban.

(From news reports )