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Blue House National Security Office Director Chung Eui-yong arrives at Incheon International Airport from Washington, DC, on Jan. 10. (Yonhap News)

Blue House National Security Office Director Chung Eui-yong, who returned to South Korea on Jan. 10 from Washington after holding high-level security talks with the US and Japan and meeting with US President Donald Trump, said that the US hadn’t made any “direct mention” of the question of deploying military forces to the Strait of Hormuz, but said he did receive a “detailed briefing from the Americans about the current situation in the Middle East.”

“The proposed deployment to the Strait of Hormuz is about protecting the safety of our citizens and our companies. We intend to contribute to international efforts to ensure safety and free navigation, but we’re still considering how we should go about doing that,” Chung went on to say.

The Hormuz deployment is also expected to be a major issue on the agenda of a meeting between South Korean Foreign Minister Kang Kyung-wha and US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to be held in San Francisco on Jan. 14.

Plans have nearly been finalized for a trilateral foreign ministers’ meeting in the same period, in which Kang and Pompeo will sit down with Japanese Foreign Minister Toshimitsu Motegi. While the immediate fears of war, triggered by the targeted killing of top Iranian general Qasem Soleimani, have subsided for now, tensions remain, and the US is gradually increasing its calls for South Korea and Japan to join its coalition against Iran.

While the South Korean government has been seriously considering the option of deploying forces to the Strait of Hormuz by sending ships from the anti-piracy Cheonghae Unit, which has operated in the Gulf of Aden, the intensifying conflict between the US and Iran has prompted calls for caution. Given the difficulty of accurately ascertaining how this tense situation will develop, some think that Seoul needs to take as much time as possible to make a prudent decision.

Blue House National Security Office Director Chung Eui-yong (right), US National Security Adviser Robert O’Brien (center), and Shigeru Kitamura, head of the Japanese Cabinet Intelligence and Research Office, pose for a commemorative photograph after high-level security talks in Washington on Jan. 8. (White House National Security Council Twitter account)

“There’s a considerable risk of the tensions between the US and Iran dragging on and of pro-Iran militant groups, rather than Iran’s regular army, attacking US or US-allied facilities in the Middle East,” said an official in the South Korean government.

Since Japan has already decided to send a ship to the Middle East, some argue that South Korea has no choice but to join the coalition, given the importance of its alliance with the US. However, the situation in Japan is quite different from that in South Korea. Japan’s decision to deploy a ship conforms to Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s political ambition of broadening the scope of activity of the Japan Self-Defense Forces, to extricate Japan from the limitations of its “Peace Constitution.” South Korea, in contrast, has to reckon with the fact that many more of its citizens and companies are operating in Iran and other parts of the Middle East.

“It’s only natural for the US to ask [for deployment], but there are 1,600 Koreans in Iraq and 290 in Iran. Our top priority is the safety of our citizens,” a senior official at South Korea’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs told reporters on Jan. 9.

By Park Min-hee and Seong Yeon-cheol, staff reporters

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