Troops to Iraq? South Korea wavers

By Barbara Demick
Los Angeles Times

CHUNG SUNG-JUN / GETTY IMAGES Prisoner abuse in Iraq prompted a protest May 11 outside the U.S. Embassy in Seoul, South Korea.

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These are not the ordinary sights and sounds of South Korea. But in the pine-forested outskirts of Seoul, the South Korean army has decked out a training camp to resemble an Arab village to help prepare soldiers for service in Iraq.

The military is even showing the classic Peter O'Toole film "Lawrence of Arabia" to help the troops get into the mood.

If South Korea follows up on a pledge made in October, it should soon have 3,600 troops in Iraq, making it the largest contributor after the United States and Britain. But the fallout from the Abu Ghraib prison-abuse scandal and continuing violence make the deployment an increasingly tough sell to the public.

Scare headlines abound about the possibility that the Iraq mission would make the country a target of Islamic terrorists. One television commentator said the prison scandal underscored the "decline of Western democracy." South Korean construction companies, which had hoped to land rebuilding contracts, now complain bitterly that it is too dangerous to set foot in the country.

Leaders of the newly elected National Assembly, in which left-of-center parties hold a majority, have promised to revisit the pledge of troops when the legislature is sworn in next month.

In a poll published in the left-leaning newspaper Hankyoreh, 64.3 percent of respondents said the commitment should be reconsidered.

"South Korea thought there were benefits to gain by going to Iraq, but there's no good to come out of it at all," said Oh Myong Kyu, 51, who was picnicking with his son, a member of an army construction brigade, and other family members of soldiers on the lawn of the training camp.

As Middle Eastern music wafted from the loudspeakers of the ersatz Arab village, Oh explained that he had tried to dissuade his son — a tall, handsome youth dressed in desert fatigues — from joining the mission.

"This war is even worse than Vietnam," Oh said. "Too many U.S. soldiers were dying, so they're bringing in ours to die as well."

Another father, 53-year-old Kim Jeong Deuk, said, "Bush is trying to shape the world with the force of America's big ego. They're forcing us to go to Iraq."
 
To hear such opinions so bluntly expressed on a military base suggests how unpopular the Iraq mission is with South Koreans. Not only students but also broad swaths of the middle-aged and the middle class oppose Seoul's involvement.

Even people who support the dispatch of troops tend to describe it as an unfortunate obligation arising from America's defense of South Korea in the Korean War.

"They helped us when we were in a difficult spot, so now we have to help them back," said Cho Chong Cheol, 72, whose son, a medic, is going to Iraq.

South Korean medics and engineers have been rotating in and out of Iraq for nearly a year, but the main dispatch of 3,000 troops is months behind schedule.

Originally, the South Koreans were to go to the northern Iraqi city of Kirkuk. But the South Korean government changed its mind in March because of rising violence.

Since then, the search for a new location has proceeded at such a slow pace that critics have accused the Koreans of foot-dragging. It now seems unlikely that the troops will be deployed before August.

Many here have interpreted the Pentagon's recent decision to send 3,600 of its 37,000 troops stationed in South Korea to Iraq as punishment for Korea's deployment delays.

By sending troops, President Roh Moo Hyun could face a rebellion by his supporters in the Uri Party, set to become the majority faction in the National Assembly in June. A poll indicates 70 percent of the party's incoming legislators do not want to send troops to Iraq.