By Any wonder why South Korean ships seem to be continuously hijacked by Somali pirates?:
South Korea ordered a warship out of Somali waters after the owner of a hijacked South Korean supertanker began negotiations with its captors, a report said Saturday.
The navy destroyer had been trying to stop pirates heading the tanker into Somali waters but the risk of endangering the ship’s crew prevented any military manoeuvres, Yonhap news agency said, without giving details on its source.
It said that now negotiations with the pirates had begun, the destroyer, Chungmugong Yisunshin, had been told to return to its usual area of operation in the Gulf of Aden.
The 300,000-tonne Samho Dream with a crew of 19 Filipinos and five South Koreans was seized Sunday in the Indian Ocean as it took crude oil from Iraq to the United States.
“The government decided the Chungmugong Yisunshin’s tasks have been completed, and therefore the destroyer will return to its area of operation,” Yonhap cited the source as saying. [Channel News Asia]
10:48 am on April 11th, 2010 1
Are South Korean ships hijacked any more "continuously" than other ships passing through these waters?
10:57 am on April 11th, 2010 2
Have the pirates even killed anyone yet? If not, why be scared of them? Why aren't we killing them anyway?
12:00 pm on April 11th, 2010 3
I think it all comes down to liability and insurance. The shipping companies and their insurers have probably figured it is cheaper to pay ransom than have insurance rates go up after losing lives our having a ship destroyed.
12:05 pm on April 11th, 2010 4
The pirates are not that discriminating or selective. They see a big ship, they go after it. They have even tried to take on military ships.
4:57 pm on April 11th, 2010 5
Yes they have killed quite a few people over the last couple of years. Usually the deaths are on ships from poorer nations, a North Korean ship slugged it out with them sometime back. It may be that there is less reason to treat them well since the payoff is expected to be much lower or that the crews resist more. (Or that they're friggin pirates and are not really all that into treating people well)
However, about a year ago they killed the captain of a small french sailboat in front of his family.