U.S. Asks South Korea To Send Withdrawing Iraqi Troops To Afghanistan

The U.S. has asked South Korea to help out in Afghanistan by sending its troops, who have been stationed in Iraq, to the challenging front in Afghanistan. Problem is...South Korea doesn't seem too thrilled with the idea. Here's some of the details from Breitbart:

The United States has asked South Korea to send troops that had been stationed in Iraq to Afghanistan, a Seoul daily reported Tuesday.
The U.S. request was made when South Korean troops were leaving Iraq on Dec. 10-14 to Kuwait on the way home, the Dong-a Ilbo newspaper said, citing military sources.
In response, South Korea has not given a clear answer, saying the troops need to be safely withdrawn to their homeland.
And South Korea's Defense Ministry denied the news report. saying "there has not been a formal request" to send troops to Afghanistan.

This is just the latest example of how strained the coalition and U.N. sponsored effort is in Afghanistan. The NATO effort in Afghanistan has been a constant case of tug of war in trying to get countries like France, Germany, Britain, Denmark, The Netherlands and Australia to send more troops to the war in Afghanistan and it's been well documented how Canada has threatened to totally review its commitment there. Only the U.S. has made major commitments to the war with Marines being sent in earlier this year and now a call for up to 30,000 additional troops being scheduled to arrive in Afghanistan in the next six to nine months.

I'm not going to beat up the South Koreans too much in that they haven't officially said no to the request yet and at the same time, South Korea has had one of the least direct links to the war in Iraq - at the same time, South Korea does have a history in Afghanistan with an extremely embarassing incident involving South Korean missionaries, mostly women, being kidnapped in Afghanistan by the Taliban and rumors that the Koreans paid for their release.

U.S. asks S. Korea to send troops to Afghanistan

SEOUL, Dec. 23 (AP) - (Kyodo)—The United States has asked South Korea to send troops that had been stationed in Iraq to Afghanistan, a Seoul daily reported Tuesday.
The U.S. request was made when South Korean troops were leaving Iraq on Dec. 10-14 to Kuwait on the way home, the Dong-a Ilbo newspaper said, citing military sources.
In response, South Korea has not given a clear answer, saying the troops need to be safely withdrawn to their homeland.
And South Korea's Defense Ministry denied the news report. saying "there has not been a formal request" to send troops to Afghanistan.
More than 520 South Korean troops returned home Friday from the northern Iraqi city of Irbil after completing a peacekeeping and reconstruction mission there that lasted four years.
Since the first deployment in September, 2004 to support U.S. troops, about 19,100 South Korean troops have served in the Zayton Division, whose name means "olive" in Arabic.