WORLD BRIEFING / SOUTH KOREA
Three South Korean army personnel have been convicted of accepting or seeking bribes while serving as part of a U.S.-led alliance aimed at rebuilding Iraq, an official said.
One of the three, a captain, was sentenced last month by a South Korean military court to three years in prison for taking $25,000 and a digital camera worth $800 from a local company involved in construction projects in the northern Iraqi city of Irbil in return for administrative favors, said an official at South Korea’s Defense Ministry.
Two others, a master sergeant and a major, received suspended jail terms for demanding bribes from other Iraqi firms, said the ministry official. The two failed to get any money, he said.
All three convicted personnel belonged to a South Korean contingent stationed in Irbil, an area largely populated by ethnic Kurds, between 2004 and 2008.
At the height of its deployment, the South Korean unit -- code-named Zaytun, or “olive” in Arabic -- had about 3,600 troops in Iraq.
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