The Marmot’s Hole

With a bill calling for the dispatch of around 3000 ROK troops to Iraq set to be passed on to the National Assembly, more and more details of the South Korean mission are coming to light. First and formost, it seems that South Korean troops will be responsible for an entire province, not just the city of Kirkuk. According to the Chosun Ilbo:

U.S. and Korean officials have determined that Korea will be responsible for the province of At Ta’min. Earlier, it was thought that Korea would assume responsibility for the provincial capital, Kirkuk. Instead, the Korean military will establish a division command at Kirkuk and from there take command of the whole province, establishing brigades or battalions in the province’s five major areas to engage in reconstruction work and peacekeeping.

Military authorities are saying that the security situation in Kirkuk is relatively stable, but that there have been four mortar attacks since August, in which five American soldiers have died and 50 have been injured.

Most of the costs for the deployment will be assumed by the South Korean government. Oil and munitions will be supplied by US forces in Iraq, with the accounts to be settled at a later date. Apparently, the ROK military wants to do some extra Christmas shopping for the deployment:

In anticipation of the potential for terrorist attacks, troops will be armed with personal firearms, mortars, K-6 heavy machine guns, K-4 high-speed grenade launchers, and K-200 armored vehicles. Various anti-tank weapons are also being considered, not just by the Koreans but also by the Japanese Self Defense Forces, as such weapons might be required to fight suicide attacks. Possible selections include light anti-tank weapons (LAW), Panzerfaust anti-tank rockets, and the Russian made Metis-M anti-tank missiles.

Now, a couple of days ago Arirang TV quoted Kirkuk’s governor as saying that ROK forces would be welcome in his city. Whether or not that will be the case has yet to be seen, but Yonhap News ran a Korean-language piece today discussing the potentially explosive ethnic situation in and around the city of Kirkuk. It quotes one Iraqi political analyst as saying that the Kirkuk area can become even more dangerous than Falluja or Ramadi, and while I don’t know quite what to make of that, it does certainly appear that South Korean troops will have their hands full trying to keep Kurds, Arabs, and Turks from killing each other.

More on this in the coming days.