South Korea plans to expand its anti-piracy patrols off the coast of Somalia to waters closer to the Strait of Hormuz, the Ministry of National Defense said, following pressure from the United States to provide support for the war on Iran.
The government will ask the National Assembly to extend the mandate of the Cheonghae unit, a naval task force due to expire at the end of 2026, a Defence Ministry spokesperson told the Reuters news agency on Thursday. The request would also widen the unit’s area of operations to waters near the port of Duqm in Oman, about 650km (403 miles) from the Strait of Hormuz.
The motion will go to lawmakers after the cabinet endorses it next week, the Yonhap news agency reported.
The Cheonghae unit has patrolled the Gulf of Aden since 2009 to protect commercial shipping. Its latest contingent sailed from South Korea’s Busan on October 2 on board the Chungmugong Yi Sun-sin, a 4,400-tonne destroyer carrying a maritime helicopter and about 300 service members.
Under the new mandate, the unit would push northeast into the Arabian Sea south of Oman, roughly doubling its operating radius to about 1,930km (1,200 miles), officials told Yonhap.
It would add 75 personnel, including a bomb disposal team, and a P-8A maritime patrol aircraft to help monitor shipping routes.
Officials told Yonhap the mission would be strictly noncombat and the unit would remain under South Korean command, operating independently of allied forces.
“The enhancement of the Cheonghae unit’s mission is to protect our citizens and safeguard our economic interests,” a defence official, speaking on condition of anonymity, told Yonhap.
“Operations will remain restricted to the open waters south of Oman, and the maritime patrol aircraft will be prohibited from targeting or monitoring Iranian territory, territorial waters or the interior of the Strait of Hormuz during their missions,” he said.
The latest proposal follows pressure from US President Donald Trump for Seoul to support Washington’s war on Iran.
South Korean President Lee Jae Myung pledged in April to help safeguard shipping during talks led by the United Kingdom and France. In September, he said he would avoid any deployment that could draw South Korea into the war.
Opposition lawmakers have argued against an expansion of the Cheonghae unit’s mission.
“Expanding the Cheonghae unit’s operational area amounts to a troop deployment,” Kim Joon-hyung, the floor leader of the small left-leaning Rebuilding Korea Party, said at a news conference at the National Assembly in Seoul on Wednesday.
“It is not a clever solution but a deceptive workaround.”
Kim warned that an expanded mission could expose South Korean forces to Iranian retaliation, even if Seoul insisted that its personnel would not take part in combat.
“If President Donald Trump boasts that South Korea was the first country in the world to dispatch troops, we would become the first country to join the Middle East war,” he said.
