SOUTH KOREA PERSPECTIVE

Seoul watches the war through the porthole of its tankers. More than two dozen South Korean ships have been trapped in the Strait of Hormuz since the start of the US-Israeli war on Iran, and every transit is scrutinized minute by minute. An LNG carrier operated by a Korean company has just cleared the strait — the second such case — bringing to 24 the number of vessels still stuck, while HMM's VLCC Universal Winner has arrived near Ulsan carrying two million barrels of Kuwaiti crude. The Seoul market, meanwhile, slid more than 4% amid the tensions and a heavy tech sell-off, with the won weakening in tow. Korean coverage relays unfiltered Trump's argument that 'more than 100 million barrels of oil and 200 commercial ships' transited Hormuz thanks to the US mission dubbed 'Project Freedom.' But Seoul draws above all a strategic lesson from the Iran episode: President Lee Jae Myung tells The Economist that the war makes North Korea 'even less likely' to give up its nuclear weapons, while reaffirming that Seoul itself is not seeking the bomb. For South Korea — an exporter dependent on Gulf hydrocarbons — the stake isn't ideological: it's the security of its supplies and its sailors.