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South Korean President Announces No Military Support To US Hormuz Mission

Tyler Durden's Photo
by Tyler Durden
Authored...

South Korea has belatedly made a big decision after starting months ago it found itself among key Washington allies directly called upon by President Trump to provide urgent security help for Strait of Hormuz energy transit, amid the war with Iran.

President Lee Jae Myung has on Friday announced he will ⁠not deploy the military to the ⁠Middle East, though his statement also suggested troops could play a role on the peripheries of the conflict.

August 2025: President Trump meets with South Korean President Lee Jae Myung at the Oval Office, Reuters.

Resisting direct calls from Trump to support the campaign against Iran, Lee made clear to a news conference: "There won’t be deployment that would involve or enter war. I can tell you that very clearly. We won’t deploy military assets in any form to that end."

"It is also clear that we must do the minimum as other countries do to ​protect our commercial shipping and crude shipments, and also the safety of ‌our people," he said. At the moment, the South Korean Navy only conducts patrols off the coast of Somali as part of international anti-piracy efforts.

Lee's words did seem to leave open a potential greater future role in terms of South Korea safeguarding global shipping in the region, but it would obviously be significantly away from the potential reach of any Iranian missile or drones, or that of their proxies.

This is a long-awaited decision. While Europe and basically the whole rest of the world has rejected Trump calls to send military assets to assist in opening the Strait of Hormuz, South Korea is in a tougher spot given the many decades-long, large American troop presence on the peninsula, safeguarding the south from possible attack from North Korea. The country is also effectively under America's nuclear protection umbrella. 

Last week, Lee's press secretary stated the government had not yet finalized its policy but was "cautiously assessing it".

But then it got a warning from Tehran. Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmail Baqaei warned on X on Sept.7. "The military presence or operational participation of other nations in the Persian Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz would inevitably be viewed as direct support for the party committing acts of aggression, and would lead to serious consequences."

And so Seoul has found itself diplomatically between a rock and a hard place:

Trump has criticized Seoul for what he called insufficient support for the Iran war and scaled back major joint military drills by the two countries’ armed forces this summer, a move that unsettled the U.S. ally.

Committing South Korean troops to the Gulf region has also seemed unpopular among the Korean populace. Rare anti-war protests have been going strong this month in front of the US Embassy in Seoul.

Locals have at times carried signs that read "Do Not Join a War of Aggression" and "No Military Deployment to Hormuz," while protesters have chanted, "We cannot send our young people into a sea of death," according to prior descriptions by the AFP.

Not going to appease Washington: "the minimum necessary activities"...

"Sending our troops to an illegal war waged by the United States is unacceptable," Choi Young-ok, a member of Korean Peace Solidarity for Sovereignty and Reunification, a group that is highly critical of the US military presence in South Korea, told AFP.

"There is no reason for us to send troops when no other country has done so or said it would," added Choi, who also warned that sending South Korean troops would "inevitably lead to casualties." Now, Seoul is nervously awaiting Trump's reaction and coming wrath.

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