"There will be no deployment that involves or intervenes in war." President Lee Jae-myung set that as the outer limit for any troop dispatch at a news conference on the 18th. The remark signaled that South Korea will offer the "contribution in Hormuz" that U.S. President Donald Trump is pressing for, but will not join the fighting.
Diplomatic circles are drawing parallels between the current situation and the Iraq deployment of more than two decades ago. Then-U.S. President George W. Bush, who had launched the war on terror after the Sept. 11 attacks, invaded Iraq in 2003 and asked the Roh Moo-hyun administration to send troops. South Korea at the time was far different from today in national power, in the weight it assigned to the alliance with Washington and in its standing in the international community. A sense of crisis also ran high, as North Korea had withdrawn from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and a second nuclear crisis was unfolding. In a December 2006 speech to the National Unification Advisory Council, the late former President Roh acknowledged: "I sent troops to Iraq because it was not about the relationship between Roh Moo-hyun the individual and the United States, but a barometer of whether the alliance between the Republic of Korea and the United States would keep functioning."
Despite strong public opposition, the government created the 320th Medical Support Unit, known as the Jema unit, and the 1100th Construction Engineer Support Unit, known as the Seohee unit, and deployed them to Iraq in April 2003. In September 2004, both units were folded into the Zaytun unit, which was sent to the Arbil region of Iraq.
Until December 2008, the Zaytun unit carried out missions including stabilizing the region, supporting reconstruction and the Iraqi interim government, assisting local policing and defending against attacks by hostile forces. Its reconstruction work stood out: the unit built more than 200 new facilities, including 68 schools, 16 health centers, 90 wells and irrigation systems, and 82 public facilities such as village halls.
From the U.S. perspective, however, the story may look somewhat different. In the Iraq war, Britain and Australia sent combat forces as part of the multinational coalition, in part because the Sept. 11 attacks gave the war a rationale. South Korea, by contrast, joined somewhat late and centered its role on medical and construction support — a deployment that amounted to little more than covering its obligations.
Analysts say a Hormuz deployment is likely to follow a similar course. Seoul is expected to send non-combat assets relatively late, around or after the end of hostilities, and the result is likely to fall short of U.S. expectations. At the news conference, Lee also referred to the Cheonghae unit deployed to the Gulf of Aden off Somalia, saying: "The military is responding to threats to the safety of our citizens along shipping routes, including from pirates, and it is true that we are reviewing and weighing how to strengthen that."
At the same time, given domestic opinion and the recent trend in the president's approval rating, a rapid dispatch of combat troops of the kind Washington wants is close to impossible. Yet as an ally, South Korea cannot avoid making the "contribution" the United States seeks. That is the Hormuz dilemma.
Doo Jin-ho, a visiting research fellow at the Institute for Far Eastern Studies at Kyungnam University, said there is "no middle ground." Still, he added, "a realistic option would be to consider ways to contribute after the war ends, or to move immediately on investment in the United States and give ground on our own commercial rationality in order to give greater weight to U.S. interests."
He saw little benefit in cooperating with Britain and France, which are discussing sending a multinational force to secure safe navigation through the Strait of Hormuz. "At first glance, a consultative body with Britain and France may look like a rational choice, but rejecting Washington's own proposal and working with London and Paris instead could be seen by the U.S. as all the more objectionable," Doo said.
