The Quiet Koreans

• Share

South Korea's troops are landing in Iraq, but very, very discreetly. Last week in the northern city of Arbil, a convoy of flatbed trucks carrying construction machinery and ambulances rumbled through town to a base being constructed on the city outskirts, trailed by a camouflaged armored vehicle with an Arabic sign reading "We Are Friends." Back home, friends and relatives could barely get any news of the troops, although South Korea will soon have the third largest number of foreign soldiers on Iraqi soil—3,600—after the U.S. and Britain. Citing security concerns, Seoul in July requested Korean media to report as little as possible about the deployment. Many of South Korea's newspapers ran articles saying they were complying, and three national television networks pulled the plug on coverage. The sole Korean journalist in Arbil, a television producer, was forced to move onto the military base by Korean authorities. She can't leave the compound without an escort of Kurdish militiamen, and hasn't received permission to file a single television story since her arrival in June.

Seoul says security is its worry, particularly after the beheading of civilian translator Kim Sun Il in June. "Reporting the situation of troops moving to Iraq," says Defense Ministry spokesman Kim Jong Chan, "could give our information to terrorists." But the deployment is controversial domestically and the voluntary gag helps prevent the issue from becoming an even larger political football. "This is very close to media censorship," says Park Tae Jeon, editor in chief of Pressian, a popular online news site that has refused to accept restrictions. "If we go along with it, we won't be able to inform the public if unfortunate things happen to our troops." In reality, that's less likely in Kurdish-controlled Arbil, which is far from the chaos in southern Iraq.