South Korea destroyer in Gulf waters after oil tanker seizure
SEOUL: South Korea will send a delegation to Iran to negotiate the release of a seized oil tanker and its crew, Seoul said Tuesday, as a anti-piracy unit arrived in waters near the Strait of Hormuz.
Iran’s Revolutionary Guards said Monday it had seized the South Korean-flagged Hankuk Chemi – which it said was carrying 7,200 tonnes of “oil chemical products” – for infringing maritime environmental laws.
Seoul’s defence ministry said Tuesday a destroyer carrying members of South Korea’s antipiracy unit had arrived in waters near the Strait of Hormuz and was “carrying out a mission to ensure the safety of our nationals”.
Seoul said the 300-strong Cheonghae unit had been in the region since late last year and would not engage in an offensive operation, an unnamed military official told the South’s Yonhap News Agency.
A foreign ministry spokesman said a government delegation would be “dispatched to Iran at
the earliest possible date to try to resolve the matter through bilateral negotiations.”
The arrested crew were from South Korea, Indonesia, Vietnam, and Myanmar, the Guards said on its website Sepahnews.
According to Iran’s central bank governor Abdolnasser Hemmati, the country has “US$7 billion of deposits in South Korea” that can neither “be transferred nor do we get any returns on, while they ask us for the costs” of holding the funds.
Iran stressed on Tuesday seizure of the Korean tanker was not a tit-for-tat move.