Update on ROK Army Iraq Deployment
The Oranckay had a link to an interesting article in the St. Petersburg Times about the ROK Army’s deployment to Iraq.
Korea has just 3,600 soldiers in Iraq compared to 150,000 from the United States. Though they are based in the Kurdish-controlled north – by far the safest part of Iraq – the Koreans spend most of their time in an isolated, massively fortified compound.
So protective is Korea of its troops that it has sliced the scenic countryside with miles of trenches and berms to keep vehicles from reaching the base except by heavily guarded roads.
The soldiers, some locals joke, are part of the “Coalition of the Sort of Willing.” Undaunted, the South Koreans point with pride to what they have accomplished since they began work here in November:
It is to bad the soldiers are confined to their compound. The Kurdish north is the most scenic area of Iraq and the people are extremely nice and welcoming. The ROK Army is doing what it can to assist the Kurds in the area.
A mobile clinic and base hospital that treat residents of nearby villages as well as those from Irbil, the Kurdish capital; an advanced training program for Kurdish doctors and nurses; a vocational school, still under construction, that will offer classes in computers, electronics and auto repair.
Those who have worked with the Koreans generally sing their praises.
“They are very polite and good,” says Ako Abbas Nader, who has served as a translator for the past month. “They are working for us, and we will work for them.”
South Korea also has contributed an undisclosed sum for local road-paving projects. The work is done by Iraqi companies but supervised by Korean engineers.
The Koreans say they are contributing to the economy by hiring scores of Kurds as drivers, translators and the like. But in a region where no one speaks Korean, soldiers and locals use a complicated system to communicate. Typically, a Kurdish interpreter translates from Kurdish into English, and a Korean interpreter then translates from English into Korean.
It’s to bad that the US media is providing more information about the ROK Army’s deployment than the Korean media. Koreans should be proud of the contribution they are making to democracy in the region. However, they cannot show much pride if they don’t know what is going on with their own soldiers there.
