For South Koreans, Deployment to Iraq Is a Tough Sell

There are artificial palm trees, a papier-mache mosque, an Iraqi flag waving at a high school and a wall scrawled with Arabic graffiti. The Muslim call to prayer drones from a loudspeaker.

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.

One might say they need all the help they can get.

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 U.S. 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 firms, 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 last week in the left-leaning newspaper Hankyoreh, 64.3% 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, appeared to be a typical “salaryman” buttoned into a navy-blue suit until he opened his mouth and spoke like a student radical.

“Bush is trying to shape the world with the force of America’s big ego,” Kim said. “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 the United States’ defense of South Korea against the communists 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.

It was originally intended that the South Koreans -- nicknamed Zaytun, the Arabic word for olives -- would 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.

The U.S. ambassador to South Korea, Thomas Hubbard, said the latest delays came from the Iraqi side, not the South Korean.

“Korea remains committed to its troop dispatch to Iraq. Delays are due in part to resolving the issue of where Korean troops would be stationed once in Iraq,” he said.

Foreign Minister Ban Ki Moon acknowledged that the prison scandal had created an “unfavorable atmosphere” but said it would not affect the “promise ... made to the United States and the Iraqi people.”

“This kind of inhumane treatment of prisoners is regrettable. We hope it will not occur again and the situation will soon be stabilized,” Ban said this month. Government officials acknowledge, however, that the political climate in their country is not conducive to the troop dispatch.

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 delays in the Koreans’ deployment of their own troops. President Roh Moo Hyun could face a rebellion over the deployment from his supporters in the Uri Party, which is set to become the majority faction in the National Assembly in June.

According to a recent poll by Korean television, 70% of the party’s incoming legislators do not want to send troops to Iraq.

Derek J. Mitchell, an expert on U.S.-Korean relations at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, predicted that Roh would not renege on the pledge because he needed Washington’s support for his approach to North Korea.

“The South Korean government is taking a very tactical view of the Iraq dispatch.... Roh sees it as a way to gain leverage for what he really cares about -- North Korea,” Mitchell said.

He believes that the Iraq mission, if it succeeds, can go a long way in repairing strains in the alliance. “I think the Americans will be very grateful that Korea is there when others have cut and run,” Mitchell said.

But if things go poorly and there are heavy South Korean casualties, there is a potential for a backlash against the United States, Mitchell said.

South Koreans already have been involved in several incidents in Iraq. In December, two electricians working as subcontractors on Iraqi power lines were killed in an ambush. In April, seven South Korean missionaries were briefly kidnapped near Fallouja.

They were released after claiming to be doctors and nurses on a medical mission and, in an effort to prove their case, gave their kidnappers Korean therapeutic massages.

“One of the Iraqis was quite big and seemed to be in poor health with a bad back,” recalled Cho Jong Heon, a minister who was one of those kidnapped. “The massage helped us establish good communication.... At first, the Iraqis were quite antagonistic because they thought we were associated with troops. But when we left, they were quite friendly.”