Assuming that the politicians have given the go ahead, the answer is No, according to an article (Korean) in Seoul Kyungjae.
The reasons given are as follows;
1. Lack of intelligence gathering assets.
2. Lack of transport assets that can enable the rapid and covert deployment of special forces, especially long-range high capacity transport planes such as the C-17 and special operations capable helos such as the MH-47, -53, or -60.
3. Lack of some personal equipment, such as GPS receivers.
4. Lack of experience in foreign operations.
5. Lack of coordination between the two ministries responsible for overseas counter terrorism, the MOFAT and the MND.
The article however does acknowledge the level of training and motivation of ROK SF troops is a major asset. However, training and motivation doesn’t help much if you are poorly equipped.
Obviously, the $20 billion or so of Korean taxpayer money that the MND spends each year for expensive and shiny fighter jets, ships, and tanks sure hasn’t helped.
22 Comments
Doesn’t change the fact that the Korean government allegedly refused to allow the US and Afghanistan to mount a rescue operation despite the fact that the allies knew where the hostages were being held.
Someguy,
You have to re-read what you wrote. Perhaps you didn’t read it at all. “the fact that the …ALLEGEDLY..”
Mins, why do you think the purpose of the military spending is for extracting citizens that get into trouble on foreign soil? That’s weird. First of all, many militaries spend that much or more but only a few can deploy overseas rescue missions without support from someone. In any event, if you want to know where the money goes, didn’t you write some recent posts about Korea’s military buildup? 20 billion isn’t just funding the operating budget. Additionally, there’s that niggling issue of national sovereignty. Afghan situations makes it look like it might be acceptable to launch an expedition, but even there it would be highly questionable. Can you think of another country where it would be acceptable?
Other than that, I enjoyed the post.
#2.
mjw, I’m not saying that the entire Korean military budget should be spent on extracting Korean citizens abroad. What I’m saying is that the defense policymakers of this country are not being realistic when it comes to what to invest in.
The current hostage crisis has shown that there is a requirement for Korean forces to carry out overseas rescue missions. But obviously, the MND hasn’t invested in the assets required for them.
And IMO, the Korean forces should also have the ability to protect its citizens overseas. I mean the US, some European nations, and India for that matter send their forces overseas to evacuate their nationals in case things get hot, shouldn’t Korea also have that ability, instead of depending on other nations?
#2,
No, not really. If you had read between the lines you would have understood this meant that I don’t trust the US government any more than I trust the South Korean one.
With the U.S. holding their hand all the way to the killzone this could’ve happened. Of course they don’t have the heavy lift, but neither does anyone else. And I’ve sold their SF GPS units myself.
Well, after Germany completely botched the hostage crisis of Munich in ‘72 they created the highly competent GSG 9. Maybe Korea will take this as a wakeup call.
#5 or maybe not
Like I said in an earlier post, give them the Apaches and any other equipment they lack. Ship via aircraft from Balad and sick them on the bastards. In-fact, it’s not too late to covertly go in and get some revenge. Think of the training opertunities!
GSG 9 is a CT-unit of the federal German police. Members of the police force are only allowed to operate within German borders or as embassy security staff in foreign countries.
The newly built military special operations and rescue unit KSK would now do the operational stuff outside Germany.
And to comment on the topic of a rescue operation offered by Afghan forces. Are you kidding? Afghan security forces are widely undercut by Taliban/Al Quaeda-sympathizers. Neither trained nor appropriately equipped to work out such a task without any experience and vague informations about the whereabouts of the hostages and the kidnappers’ hideouts.
Although frankly spoken, Korean special forces wouldn’t have performed any better in the hostage situation. No topographical experience and knowledge of Afghan topography and no measures to counter weird Taliban suicide strategies to kill all hostages at their hands.
Putting all these obsolete armchair rescue mission strategies aside:
Them dumb 21 Korean missionary workers should be ripped their butts off at home. It was their cardinal fault to move their sorry Christian asses into a fucked up country like Afghanistan.
Although compelling to send in some ROK forces to kill some Taliban, the question remains, why Korean soldiers should put themselves in harm’s way for revenging 2 killed reckless citizens, who had been dumb enough to risk their lives for egoistic Christian salvation reasons.
It doesn’t matter if the current government has paid ransom or not (I bet they definitely have)for the release. Afghanistan is already a lost case. The Afghan government is a hopeless, ineffective bunch of drug traffickers and corrupt warlords without any real power outside Kabul City. The majority of the people in Pashtun provinces tolerate and back the Taliban movement. And the Taliban for themselves earn more than enough money with their opium trade to continue their “fight” against ISAF until the West loses its interest and pull back its forces from Afghanistan.
According to The Korean Herald and one Jin Dae-woong, the Korean military was very much involved. “The Korean detachment exerted an all-out effort in persuading NATO and U.S. forces not to take military action…”
Wow, brings a tear to the eye. The heroism!
It is so sad what the KSF has become. I don’t think they will survive another liberal presidency. Yeah, I know they will win any push-up contest out there and they do the push-ups around the clock but man they suck ass! I think even Filipino SF units have better experience and would kill any KSF units head to head. Case in point, the Canucks have the most pudgy, pancake eating SF guys out there but to their credit they intensely study everything the US SF does and implement it to the best of a Canuck’s natural ability. Thus, despite their wimpy leadership they can kick some ass.
I said this at the first hint of ROK SF being involved. People were saying send a ROK Special Ops brigade but for what?
What would they have done except been embarrassed, gotten KIA, and having no clue what was going on no experience in that region. Could they have coordinated translators? Intelligence?
How would they been transported? Korean military doesn’t have long range deployment aircraft or air refueling capabilities for long range missions. They do not have contingencies to be somewhere else in the world in 24 hours.
The Zaytun left Korea in a KAL 747 probably to Germany where the USAF inserted them into Iraq and the US Army convoyed them up to the Kurdish region (I think Irbil).
All the questions above have to make you believe they made the right call to stay out of Afghanistan.
The ROK SF is almost only trained for operations in Korea against hostile actions from NK. Only when they receive the proper training to conduct operations in other theaters will they be able to undertake such missions.
Strictly speaking the Seoul Kyongjae is correct, but there are darned few countries in the world that can unilaterally accomplish all five listed tasks. That is why the US military often gets asked to assist non-US military operations. There is no reason to expect the ROK military to operate entirely on its own. That is one of the things that an alliance partnership gets you.
I am probably the only person here so far who feels that the lives of the hostages became of secondary importance once they became hostages under these circumstances. They were given every possible warning and they had other countries’ past experiences with the Taliban from which to learn before they went out to preach in Afghanistan. Once they became hostages, though, it became the ROK government’s responsibility to do what it could to prevent future hostage taking.
In my view, I think South Korea should have worked with the US to conduct a military raid on as many suspect hostage locations as possible to serve as a notice to the Taliban that Seoul would not tolerate its citizens being taken hostage. If some of the hostages were actually rescued, all the better, but ultimately the mission, I think, would be to send the message and to kill as many Taliban hostage takers as possible. If the cost is too high, the Taliban would move on to easier targets. This would also have a secondary purpose of sending a message to other South Korea citizens to think before puting themselves at such risk.
The way the situation played out was, unfortunately, predictable. Instead of acting to prevent further acts of terror, Roh Moo-hyun chose to support terrorism and to put at risk even futher the lives of its citizens and the lives of other nations’ citizens. I suspect that the world will be paying the price for Seoul’s negligence for some time to come.
Yes, any operation in Afghanistan and Iraq for that matter should be coordinated with the U.S. But this does not mean that the ROK should depend on the U.S. for everything. For example, when the Zaytun unit deployed to Iraq, they planned to take ROKA helos with them to provide air support. But someone in the MND got the idea that since the U.S. had helos on the ground in Iraq, it would be better and cheaper (for Korea) to ask for helo support from the U.S. instead. And the thing is, S. Korea was the only country with large ground forces in Iraq, that didn’t have its own helo unit.
Now, I don’t expect the ROK to address all of the 5 issues listed above. But at the least, it should address issues 2 ~ 5.
Mins0306, I’m not completely disagreeing with you. South Korea’s been talking about the AHX and other helicopter projects for decades, but with little result. AH-64 purchases have been on again, off again for a decade. The MND is now working on developing its own helicopter, but even that project has been scaled back from developing an attack and a utility helicopter using a common airframe. The South’s current airframes are aging and will soon need to be replaced, but replacements are not on the horizon and the current domestic helicopter project is years away from completion. This is an example of very poor long-range planning.
Regarding reason #4, though, South Korea does have a fair amount of experience in overseas military operations, working with many different militaries. Seoul, however, has sought to limit the scope of those operations so the ROK military has not been able to make the most of those operations. The Special Warfare Command spent more than a year in East Timor, elements of the Army were in Western Sahara for more than a decade, and the military’s been in Afghanistan since 2001 and Iraq since 2002 (engineers and medics were operating in Iraq long before the ROK military took over Irbil). There are also many other overseas deployments that the military has been involved in for years.
South Korean political leadership, though, has done its best to squander the ROK military’s chances to benefit from these deployments. The SWC in East Timor was forced to accept responsibility for a relatively quiet sector and despite being a SOF unit, was forced to conduct operations from APCs like a mech infantry unit. The problems with the very limited objectives of the Iraq deployment are probably well enough known here that I don’t need to waste space detailing them. South Korean military medical and engineering personnel are very well integrated into foreign military operations, but the rest of the ROK military lacks this experience.
I’m not sure what the Seoul Kyongjae’s point was with reason number 5. I believe the NIS is primarily responsible for overseas counterterrorism, or at least, I would expect it to be as the nation’s intelligence agency. I’m not sure how MOFAT is included in a counterterrorism ministry. It is a foreign ministry and it has lots of experience doing what it needs to do to assist South Korean counterterrorism efforts overseas–if South Korea was actually interested in counterterrorist operations off the Korean Peninsula. The MND has a role, in that the Defense Security Command is responsible for protecting the ROK military, but again, this is secondary to the NIS’ role. South Korea’s problem is not coordinating CT efforts between the MOFAT and MND, it is getting interested in fighting terrorism from sources other than North Korea.
BREAKING NEWS!
CNN just reported that the Taliban leader who organized the kidnappings was killed in a firefight.
May he NOT R.I.P.
Well, good! Indeed, may he Rot. Who was it on our side of the firefight…?
According to this AP report, it was the Afghan police who took him out.
As posted in an earlier comment of mine, I would not be surprised if this news about the Taliban leader being taken out is true. Also not surprised that it may be the Afghans that got him.
1. Lack of intelligence gathering assets.
2. Lack of transport assets that can enable the rapid and covert deployment of special forces, especially long-range high capacity transport planes such as the C-17 and special operations capable helos such as the MH-47, -53, or -60.
3. Lack of some personal equipment, such as GPS receivers.
4. Lack of experience in foreign operations.
5. Lack of coordination between the two ministries responsible for overseas counterterrorism, the MOFAT and the MND.
6. Enabling circumstances and sheer dumb luck.
Which was what enabled the Israelis to rescue over a 100 hostages being held by Palestinian militants. This was perhaps the most successful commando-raid rescue operation in history and it is a great credit to the Tsa’hal.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/5101412.stm
The militants had hijacked an Air France plane and landed in Entebbe Airport in Uganda, where they held the hostages with the cooperation of Uganda’s dictator Idi Amin.
Advantage #1:
The militants had released 47 non-Israeli passengers three days into the crisis. Mossad agents were dispatched to interrogate them, and obtained vital info, such as the internal layout of the terminal building.
In comparison, when the two Korean female hostages were released, it is likely they had little or no useful info.
Advantage #2 (which is related to #1):
All hostages were being kept in one location, the terminal building at Entebbe Airport and that the Ugandan soldiers were cooperating (which also meant that Idi Amin was cooperating).
The Taliban likely held the hostages in many separate locations, in secret caves that existed since the days of the Soviet invasion.
Advantage #3 (which is related to #2):
The hostages were being held at an airport.
Advantage #4:
Entebbe Airport is only an 8.5 hour flight from Israel on a C130 transport.
Operation Thunderball (later renamed to Operation Yonatan) called for the 29 commandos to land on the airport and move rapidly to the terminal building. They utilized an ingenious ploy: they rolled out of the C130s in Mercedes and Land Rovers, dressed in Ugandan uniforms to make it appear as if Idi Amin was coming for a visit.
Results:
- 7 hijackers and 2 Ugandan soldiers killed
- 3 hostages killed
- Col Yonatan Netenyahu KIA
- 106 passengers and crew rescued.
No one ever ended a fight with a bully or gang member by being subservient–all that does is create an incentive for that bully and others to impose their will. And the payment never stops or gets smaller. It’s just human nature…
Rudyard Kipling’s poem “Danegeld” is spot-on here:
—-
It is wrong to put temptation in the path of any nation,
For fear they should succumb and go astray;
So when you are requested to pay up or be molested,
You will find it better policy to say: –
“We never pay any-one Dane-geld,
No matter how trifling the cost;
For the end of that game is oppression and shame, And the nation that pays it is lost!”
—-
South Korea’s response should have been to offer the Afghan government an additional _company_ of soldiers for each Korean Hostage plus an additional _battalion_ for each hostage killed. With the additional 3-5000 Korean troops on the way, the Taliban would have wisely released the hostages, unharmed, already…
Instead, the Korean Government has chosen to “show the white feather”. It is a sad day, indeed. And since the Korean government has chosen to remove any value from the hostages being alive, we can expect others to follow as hostages or into dhimmitude.
The most effective “rescue mission” would have been to send Korean troops into Afghanistan as garrison troops, in effect a “Surge”, freeing up the NATO troops to pursue the Taliban.
But the Koreans are rapidly losing respect around the world. Even D-Wars isn’t working…
All this is so academic. The buffoons in Seoul are doing the OPPOSITE of a rescue attempt. They’re literally funding future terrorist missions while they run for cover. Two Koreans are murdered and the best they can do is parade the ex-hostages around like they accomplished a miracle … and send them the bill for expenses. I’m not sure what’s more maddening—the cowardice or the sheer stupidity.
# 11,
If Vietnam is a guide, then Korean combat operations overseas tend to be very careful and methodical. I’d imagine that any combat assets sent to Afganistan would have started out doing something relatively easy first, then would have been a little more careful and detailed then they needed to be.