According to Reuters and Yonhap News Agency, a South Korean delegation went to Iran on the 6th local time to negotiate with Iran on the seizure of the ship.
In addition, South Korea’s Vice Foreign Minister Choi Jong-kyung-kyung will also travel to Iran on the 10th local time to discuss a series of bilateral issues.
Yonhap said that South Korea’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said it was maintaining communication with Iran through channels such as the mutual ambassadors and senior diplomatic officials of South Korea and Iran.
At the same time, the South Korean Ministry of Foreign Affairs also cooperates with the United States and the European Union, Iran’s friends such as Qatar and Oman, and countries where foreign crew members of Korean ships have been detained, such as Vietnam, Myanmar and Indonesia.
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of South Korea is reportedly investigating whether the ship violated international law because of polluting the waters and said that the ship should not be considered illegal unless it is proved to have deliberately committed serious pollution acts.
At the same time, the South Korean Ministry of Foreign Affairs is also investigating whether Iran violated international law in the process of boarding and detaining the ship.
According to a previous report by Iran’s Fars News Agency, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps of Iran seized a Korean-flagged tanker in the Gulf on the 4th on the grounds that it “has repeatedly violated laws and regulations related to the marine environment”.
The report quoted a statement from the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps of Iran that at the request of the procuratorial office of Iran’s Hormuzgan province and the national port and maritime administration, the Revolutionary Guard Corps navy seized the tanker from Jubail, Saudi Arabia, in its jurisdiction on the same day.
The tanker was reported to be carrying about 7,200 tons of petrochemicals, with crew members from South Korea and several Southeast Asian countries.
The ship was seized and docked in southern Iranian ports and handed over to the local judiciary. The destroyer Choi Mi, a South Korean Qinghai Force (South Korean troops stationed in the Gulf of Aden, Somalia), arrived in the waters near the Strait of Hormuz on the 5th to respond to the detention of the Korean chemical transport ship by Iran.
