A South Korean oil tanker managed to traverse the Strait of Hormuz on Wednesday in a rare move, marking the first such successful passage by any South Korean vessel through the blocked waterway ever since the beginning of the Iran war.
“At this very moment, our oil tanker is passing through the Strait of Hormuz,” said Foreign Minister Cho Hyun, in an address to lawmakers at the National Assembly in Seoul earlier.
“We completed consultations with the Iranian authorities, and the vessel began sailing yesterday, proceeding very cautiously,” Hyun said, adding that the tanker was carrying “2 million barrels” of oil.
According to leading real-time ship-tracking, and maritime analytics site MarineTraffic, the Seoul-flagged tanker Universal Winner was on the eastern side of the Strait of Hormuz near the entrance to the Gulf of Oman, bound for the southeastern South Korean city of Ulsan after departing Kuwait’s Mina Al Ahmadi port.
The successful voyage came weeks post the airborne attack on a South Korean vessel near the Strait of Hormuz, which greatly exacerbated maritime security concerns for South Korean shipping in the region.
Previously, the Seoul-flagged vessel HMM Namu was struck by “two unidentified aircraft” on May 4, leading to damage on the outer plate of the vessel’s port-side ballast tank near the stern, and causing a fire in the engine room.
Tehran had denied responsibility for the attack, with its embassy in Seoul posting a statement on its website in the days following the attack, saying it “firmly rejects and categorically denies any allegations regarding the involvement” of its forces, Seoul blamed the Islamic Republic for the attack, and strongly condemned the strike, stating that it hoped to identify the perpetrators through a thorough investigation.
