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After Iran stopped an oil tanker sailing under the South Korean flag, South Korea sent a naval unit to the Persian Gulf to combat piracy. Cheonghae’s unit with the destroyer “Choi Young” was heading to the scene of the incident, the Foreign Ministry in Seoul said. It takes “security measures for our ships that are in the surrounding maritime area.” No further details were given.
The ministry said the “Hankuk Chemi” tanker, which had been in the Strait of Hormuz near Oman, was entering Iranian waters at the request of Iranian authorities. South Korea asked Iran to release the ship immediately. Together with the South Korean embassy in Iran, all crew members of the chemical tanker and oil tanker will be checked for safety. Therefore, there were 20 crew members on board, including five Koreans. The others are from Myanmar, Indonesia and Vietnam.
Iranian news agency Isna had previously reported, citing the country’s Revolutionary Guard, that the tanker was headed for the port city of Bandar Abbas. The Revolutionary Guard accused the tanker’s crew of polluting the waters of the Persian Gulf with their cargo of ethanol. The tanker had come from the Saudi Arabian port of Al-Jubail and loaded 7,200 tons of the chemical.
The case recalls the arrest of the British tanker “Stena Impero” in July 2019. The Iranian Revolutionary Guard had confiscated the ship in the Strait of Hormuz because it had allegedly rammed a fishing boat. They released it two months later.
Tensions in the Gulf region have escalated significantly since the US policy of “maximum pressure” against Iran after it withdrew from the international nuclear agreement in 2018. Ships were attacked multiple times in the Strait of Hormuz, drones shot down and they confiscated oil tankers. One fifth of the world’s oil production is transported through the strategically important strait between the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman.
