A South Korean destroyer is steaming for Libya and South Korean special forces are on standby in Greece in preparation for a possible hostage rescue mission.
According to the presidential office on Thursday, the Korean navy’s anti-piracy Cheonghae unit has redeployed from the Gulf of Aden and is heading for the North African country.
A South Korean national, along with three Filipinos, was kidnapped in Libya by armed insurgents on July 6, Seoul’s foreign ministry said.
“His country and his president have never once forgotten him,” Presidential Spokesman Kim Eui-kyeom said, according to the Yonhap news agency. Seoul’s move was apparently prompted by the release, one day prior, of video footage showing the un-named South Korean captive pleading for President Moon Jae-in to help win his release.
“The government has been maintaining a close cooperation system with the government of Libya and other allies, such as the Philippines and the United States,” Kim added.
According to local media, the Korean hostage had been working for a water management company in Libya. Korean firms have long been active in the country, particularly in construction and pipeline management.
The identities and motives of the kidnappers are unknown.
The 4,000-ton destroyer Munmu the Great, which has a machine-gun armed Lynx helicopter aboard, is en route to Libya, Yonhap reported. And a South Korean special operations unit is on standby in Crete, Greece, according to South Korea’s Joongang Ilbo newspaper.
It is not the first time the Cheonghae unit has taken on similar duties.
In April, the Munmu the Great and South Korean UDT/SEALs were tasked with securing the release of three Korean nationals – the captain, mate and chief engineer of the fishing vessel Marine 137 – who had been seized by pirates off West Africa on March 26.
However, on April 27, the three were released after negotiations in Ghana, according to South Korea’s Foreign Ministry. No military action apparently took place.
While the 618,000-strong South Korean armed forces are considered highly effective by their US allies and mentors, and have taken a consistent role in anti-piracy operations, they have had little overseas combat experience since the end of the Vietnam War.
However, they have taken part in one high-profile operation.
In 2011, UDT/SEALs carried out a successful hostage rescue mission in the Gulf of Aden. Assaulting a Korean vessel seized by Somali pirates, the commandos rescued 21 hostages, though the captain was severely injured in the crossfire. Eight pirates were killed and five captured in the operation.
Are the Koreans & a Pilipino hostage has been rescued already in Libya?
Go go go go, South Korean Special Forces, you will achieve your mission successfuly
And the philippines still didnt move at all. Again they will sit and try to talk and talk and talk. Hoping the koreans will kill them all. Filipinos cannot do anything like that compared to koreans.
fililpino and koreans had the best teamworks in terms of war…
I gesse the South Korean armies impossible to against with hostage adopted ,
COME ON CHE SERMA AFRAID TO ANSWER MY QUESTIONS?
WERE YOU IN COUNTRY DID YOU KNOW HOW MANY INNOCENT MEN WOMEN & CHILDREN CHARLIE AND THE NVA KILLED IN THE ENTIRE VIETNAM WAR; (ESPECIALLY HUE CITY.), EVEN BEFORE THE U S WAS INVOLVED. FOLKS SUCH AS YOU WHO DO NOT KNOW WHAT THE HELL THEY ARE TALKING ABOUT PISS ME OFF AND ALL MY FELLOW MILITARY BROTHERS & SISTERS THAT ALSO SERVED THERE IN AND AROUND VIETNAM AND THAT INCLUDES YANKEE STATION & THE BROWN WATER NAVY DESPISE PEOPLE LIKE YOU!
JOESEPH, SO HAD CHARLIE & THE NVA HAD THEIR ENTIRE LIFETIME FIGHTING IN THE JUNGLES OF VIETNAM, BUT THE 2 ROK DIVISIONS SENT KICKED THEIR BUTT SO BADLY THEY REFUSED TO ENGAGE THE ROKS. VIETNAM VETERAN RETIRED
CORRECTION:WW II NOT WE II
WE II NOT WW IO
COMMITTED NOT COMMITTEE
THE GERMANS NOT HERMANS
Joe Wong, DURING WE II MORE GERMANS & JAPANESE WERE MORE GUILITY OF WAR
CRIMES & WERE NOT PUNISHED THAN THE FEW KOREANS THAT WERE CONSCRIPTED INTO THE JAPANESE MILITARY. ALSO THE CHINESE COMMUNIST IN
WW IO COMMITTEE WAR CRIMES AS WELL. WE ARE CLOSE FRIENDS WITH THE JAPANESE. THE HERMANS& THE SOUTH KOREANS. SO LET US NOT FORGET EVEN OUR ONE TIME ENEMIES CAN BECOME FRIENDS. WE ARE MAKING GREAT STRIDES IN VIETNAM, CAMBODIA & LAOS ALSO.
TO ALL: I KNOW THE ROK’S DO NOT NEED AMERICAN LEADERS TO DO THIS MISSION. I PITY THE HOSTAGE TAKERS. I HAVE SEEN THEM IN ACTION MEAR MONKEY MOUNTAIN AND DA NANG. USAF AIRCREW MEMBER RETIRED.
Joe Wong 70m died during the Cultural Revolution. Chuck in the m’s that died in E Turkmenistan and Tibet…. or the Rape of Nanking when Mao ran away.
The monuments (Grt Wall etc) in China were also built on the blood of peasants.
I also condemn the plunder of the many by the few….. CPC.
This month-old story screams for editorial supervision.
Ivor Large, The West (Europeans and their offshoots like the American, Aussie, etc.) is where is now, because of those hundreds of millions of people all over the world who were robbed and murdered, those who become victims of their very madness of colonialism and orientalism, of the crusades and the slave and Opium trades. Cathedrals and palaces, museums and theatres, train stations – all had been constructed on horrid foundations of bones and blood, and amalgamated by tears.
There were so many centuries of plunder that the acts of looting the world for the sole benfit of the few, turned into inseparable part of the ‘Wester existence and culture’, though it is something that gets almost never addressed, but it does not mean it has never happened and nobody is allowed to mention it.
South Korean has got off their war crimes easy; in WWII, the Koreans served in the Japanese military were notorious barbaric, they were called 二鬼子. During the Vietnam War, the South Koreans repeated their criminal behavour in Vietnam against the Vietnamese, but they never have been investigated by the international community for their war crimes. This time the international community should not let them get off free if the South Korean repeat their criminal behaviour in Libya,
NOT A WORD FROM THE US. AND THIS IS A MONTH OLD ALREADY. SO WHAT IS SO KOREA GOING TO DO INLAND??NO NAVY WILL DO ANY GOOD.THESE CIA U.S. JIHADHIS ARE FEROSIOUS AND HAVE BEEN FIGHTING IN THE DESERT FOR A DECADE.GOOD LUCK SO KOREA!!
Where is Viet mentioned in this article. If you’re windering about why Koreans fought in the Vietnam war, well maybe they remembered what it’s like to be threatened by Chinese Communists.
My hat off to the Korean arm forces. Well trained and most disciplined soldiers. But, why Vietnam? I been have bothered by this question for a very long time. The South Korean don’t have a dog in the fight with Vietnamese and vice versa. It’s American’s fight. Why do you choose to kill, bomb, aiming to toally destroy a people and country that has not done a damn thing to you? There could never, ever be a justification to it. Never, ever!
The Korean Special Forces are no joke and will give no mercy to the SCUM that kidnapped the Korean working in the shithole——-known as another failed state——-didn’t Obama and his so so smart Secretary of State approve the overthrow———lets not forget NATO——-in this disaster also!!
thanks sir trying this best job
bvb