South Korea plans to send a maritime patrol aircraft and a mine-clearance team to waters south of Oman, close to the Strait of Hormuz, by expanding the mission of its Cheonghae anti-piracy naval unit, the Defence Ministry in Seoul said on Thursday, November 5. Officials insisted the move does not amount to joining the war between the United States and Iran.
What Seoul is sending
The expansion was endorsed at a vice-ministerial meeting on Thursday morning and still requires cabinet and presidential sign-off before going to the National Assembly, whose approval is needed, according to The Korea Times. The government hopes to dispatch the additional forces as early as the end of this year, Korea JoongAng Daily reported.
Under the plan, the unit’s personnel ceiling would rise from 320 to 395. Of the 75 extra personnel, 45 would crew a P-8 maritime patrol aircraft and 30 would form an explosive ordnance disposal team. The package also includes unmanned surface and underwater vehicles and remotely operated underwater robots used in mine clearance, according to Korean media and to Yonhap figures cited by AFP. The aircraft is expected to operate from Djibouti, although its base has not been finalised.
The unit’s area of operations would stretch from the Gulf of Aden, where it has escorted merchant ships since 2009, to open waters south of Oman. Korea JoongAng Daily said its maximum operating radius would double from 600 to 1,200 nautical miles, reaching waters off the Omani port of Duqm. The destroyer ROKS Chungmugong Yi Sun-sin, which left Busan on October 9 for the unit’s 49th rotation, is currently assigned to the mission.
Limits written into the mission
The ministry stressed that the deployment would remain outside the strait itself. “Operations will remain restricted to the open waters south of Oman,” an official said, according to AFP. The patrol aircraft will not be allowed to monitor Iranian territory, its territorial waters or the inner part of the strait, and the unit’s activities will be limited to self-defence.
Officials acknowledged that the mine-clearing capability could prepare South Korea for a possible future role in clearing Hormuz, but said this was not the main objective. Any deployment inside the strait would require separate parliamentary approval and a “permissive environment”, such as an end to the war or an agreement between Washington and Tehran, a condition also set by Britain and France.
Seoul officially presents the expansion as a response to piracy. The ministry said reported incidents rose from 11 in 2025 to 36 so far this year, partly because multinational naval forces have shifted towards the Red Sea and Hormuz, leaving the waters off Somalia less patrolled.
Pressure from Washington, warning from Tehran
The decision comes after months of US pressure on allies to contribute to maritime security around Hormuz since the US-Iran war began on February 28 and choked traffic through a waterway that normally carries about a fifth of the world’s oil. Korea JoongAng Daily reported that President Donald Trump said in August he had asked President Lee Jae Myung for help on Iran and had been turned down. In September, Lee said South Korea had “upheld the principle of non-involvement and non-intervention in the war”, AFP noted.
Iran has already warned Seoul. On September 7, Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baqaei said that any military deployment by other countries in the Gulf or the strait would be regarded as “direct support” for the party responsible for the aggression and “will have serious consequences”, according to AFP.
At home, the plan has drawn criticism. Rep. Kim Joon-hyung of the Rebuilding Korea Party warned that an accidental clash could be interpreted as entering the war, while Jeon Eun-su, a spokesperson for the ruling Democratic Party, said the operational area “does not even reach the Strait of Hormuz”, The Korea Times reported.