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On Jan. 22, peace activists gather outside the Blue House to protest the deployment of South Korean troops to the Strait of Hormuz. (Kim Hye-yun, staff reporter)

Quite a few people have compared the Moon administration’s deployment of South Korean forces to the Strait of Hormuz with the deployment of troops to Iraq by former President Roh Moo-hyun. South Korean looked into both deployments at the request of the US, and the government had to juggle two goals during both decision-making processes: maintaining its alliance with the US and managing affairs on the Korean Peninsula. But a closer look reveals considerable differences in the nature of the units being deployed, the situation on the ground, and the risk they faced.

The Iraq deployment was adopted by the Roh administration as it sought to bring the US — which was maintaining a tough stance on the North Korean nuclear issue — back to the negotiating table. The Iraq deployment was Roh’s way of thanking the US for paying heed to his opposition to taking military measures on the Korean Peninsula, wrote former Unification Minister Lee Jong-seok in his memoir “Peace on a Knife’s Edge.” Lee was then serving as the deputy secretary-general of the National Security Council.

It’s true that President Moon Jae-in ordered the Hormuz deployment at a time when a breakthrough is needed for the deadlocked North Korea-US denuclearization talks. Regardless, this deployment doesn’t seem to have been intended to resolve any South Korea-US conflict. Some think that the plan for South and North Korea to improve relations on their own that Moon unveiled this year has caused friction with the US, which hopes to maintain the sanctions framework. But since the US also supports finding a diplomatic solution to the North Korean nuclear issue, the two countries don’t appear to be at odds. Even their defense cost-sharing negotiations, which ran into trouble at first because of excessive demands from the US, are moving toward a resolution. Seoul has stressed that the Hormuz deployment is separate from pending issues in its relationship with the US.

The rationale for the Iraq deployment was aiding the country’s peaceful reconstruction. In April 2003, 573 construction engineers in the Seoheui Unit and 100 medics in the Jema Unit were dispatched to Iraq, followed by the 3,000-strong Zaytun Unit in 2004. All these units were composed of non-combat troops. The Roh administration never accepted an American request for a combat unit to maintain security in northern Iraq.

After setting up its base in Arbil, the Zaytun Unit focused on its reconstruction mission, teaching Taekwondo to locals and repairing the sewer system. External security was entrusted to the Kurdish military forces, known as the Peshmerga. In contrast, the Cheonghae Unit, which is being deployed to the Strait of Hormuz, is a combat unit, assigned to a top-of-the-line destroyer equipped with anti-submarine, anti-ship, and anti-air armaments. Rather than hunkering down in a single location like the Zaytun Unit, the Cheonghae Unit will have to escort ships and pass through hostile territory if an incident occurs.

When the Zaytun Unit was deployed, Iraq was occupied by American troops. Within 20 days of launching its invasion in 2003, the US Army had captured Baghdad. Despite boasting a regular army of 538,000 soldiers with 650,000 more in the reserves, the Iraqi Army collapsed without managing to put up a decent fight. This essentially left no regular troops that could pose a real threat to the Zaytun Unit. But the Strait of Hormuz is controlled by Iran, which has a large regular army and is thought to have considerable missile and rocket capability. The mere existence of those missiles is enough to pose a threat to the Cheonghae Unit when it approaches or passes through the Strait of Hormuz.

The Iraq deployment cleared the arduous hurdle of receiving the consent of the National Assembly. Opposition to the deployment of South Korean troops led to demands for their withdrawal in 2004 after Kim Seon-il, a South Korean doing missionary work in Iraq, was abducted and killed by a terrorist organization that wanted South Korean troops out of the country. But the Moon administration holds that it doesn’t require additional consent from the National Assembly for its decision to deploy troops to the Strait of Hormuz, which it says corresponds to a clause in the Cheonghae Unit’s deployment orders, previously ratified by the National Assembly, which states that the unit’s operational scope can be expanded in the event of a crisis.

By Yoo Kang-moon, senior staff writer

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