I was against the deployment of the ROK Army to Iraq from the very beginning and was glad to see the news that the ROK Army was going to finally complete their withdrawal from Iraq:

South Korea, which once had the third-largest foreign military contingent in Iraq, will pull all of its troops out off the country on schedule by the end of this year, a military official said on Friday.

Local media had reported the South may extend its deployment again as a favor to its major ally, the United States, which is re-examining its forces in Iraq after improvements in overall levels of security this year.

Defense ministry spokesman Won Tae-jae told a news briefing that when the deployment was extended by one year in December 2007, it was on the condition that the pullout would be completed by the end of 2008.

“And there is no change whatsoever to the plan that everyone in the (unit) would withdraw by the year end,” he said.

South Korea sent 3,600 soldiers to Iraq in 2004, which was then the largest foreign military presence after the United States and Britain. It has been rolling back its troop level under public pressure against the mission.

It now has fewer than 600 troops stationed in a relatively safe area in the Kurdish north of the country.  [Associated Press]

“Relatively Safe”?  Kurdistan isn’t relatively safe, it is safe and probably a whole lot safer then if the ROK Army contingent was stationed in Detroit.  The ROK Army did not lose one soldier during its entire deployment to Kurdistan to hostile action.  In fact the ROK Army had more soldiers killed stationed back in Korea then in Iraq.

I have been against the Zaytun deployment before the unit was ever deployed because I figured the unit would not be allowed to do much of anything meaningful which is evident by the fact they can’t even go to a local market place to buy supplies in the highly friendly and secure Kurdish region of Iraq. They did do a good job with the toilets though, I have to give them credit for that.

I am also critical of this deployment because if there was a mass casualty attack or as we saw with the Taliban, a pro-longed hostage crisis, the anti-US groups, politicians, and media would waste no time capitalizing on it. Additionally, the Korean government would expect unrealistic political benefits from the dispatch.

I am also not the only one voicing opposition to the dispatch, the Kurds were literally laughing at the Zaytun “occupation force”.  Even Korean soldiers that have served in the Zaytun unit have voiced their frustrations with the deployment, which has been echoed by the Korean media as well.  The Iraqi Prime Minister Maliki has already hinted that what he really wants is 2,300 Korean businessmen instead of 2,300 Zaytun soldiers.  Now that is a deployment I could agree with.