SEOUL: Dozens of South Koreans urged their government on Wednesday not to deploy troops to the strategic Strait of Hormuz, slamming what they called Washington\u2019s \u201cillegal war\u201d.<\/p>\n
The protesters across from the large US embassy compound in Seoul waved signs saying \u201cDo not join a war of aggression\u201d as their leaders weigh a \u201ccontribution\u201d to the waterway\u2019s security.<\/p>\n
US President Donald Trump has pressured ally South Korea to help in the Middle East war, which has seen Iran take a stranglehold on the strait key to global oil supplies.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe cannot send our young people into a sea of death!\u201d chanted the protesters, who numbered about 60 according to an AFP estimate, on the steps outside Seoul\u2019s Sejong Center for the Performing Arts.<\/p>\n
The protest came a day after South Korean defence authorities said they had sent a fact-finding mission to assess the situation in Hormuz, while stressing that no decision had been made on any deployment.<\/p>\n
South Korea said Friday it was considering \u201ccontributions\u201d to US security efforts along the strait provided that its own military readiness was not compromised.<\/p>\n
Iran has warned that any South Korean deployment would be \u201cregarded as direct support for the party responsible for that aggression and will have serious consequences\u201d.<\/p>\n
Jung Kyung-jik of the civic group People\u2019s Solidarity for Participatory Democracy told AFP that he saw Tehran\u2019s point.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs Iran has said, the deployment of our troops to the region would amount to direct participation in an illegal war,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere have been numerous violations of international law arising from US attacks on Iran, including the bombing of an elementary school and energy infrastructure,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Trump has struggled to get help from allies in the war that the United States and Israel launched on Iran six months ago and has since hit an impasse.<\/p>\n
Iran maintains a stranglehold on the strategic strait — which was the conduit for one-fifth of the world\u2019s oil supply before the war — and Washington has pressed its counter-blockade of Iranian ports.<\/p>\n
Choi Young-ok, a member of Korean Peace Solidarity for Sovereignty and Reunification, warned that a deployment would \u201cinevitably lead to casualties\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cSending our troops to an illegal war waged by the United States is unacceptable,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere is no reason for us to send troops when no other country has done so or said it would.\u201d<\/p>\n
If Seoul were to deploy armed forces to the strait, it would require parliamentary approval by a majority vote in the National Assembly.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SEOUL: Dozens of South Koreans urged their government on Wednesday not to deploy troops to the strategic Strait…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":148336,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[31,33,116,75203],"class_list":["post-148335","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-korea","tag-korea","tag-south-korea","tag-strait-of-hormuz","tag-war-in-iran"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/148335","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=148335"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/148335\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/148336"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=148335"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=148335"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=148335"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}