“We cannot send our young people into a sea of death!” chanted the protesters, who numbered about 60 according to an AFP estimate, on the steps outside Seoul’s Sejong Center for the Performing Arts.
The protest came a day after South Korean defence authorities said they had sent a fact-finding mission to assess the situation in Hormuz, while stressing that no decision had been made on any deployment.
South Korea said on Friday it was considering “contributions” to US security efforts along the strait, provided that its own military readiness was not compromised.
Iran has warned that any South Korean deployment would be “regarded as direct support for the party responsible for that aggression and will have serious consequences”.
Jung Kyung-jik of the civic group People’s Solidarity for Participatory Democracy told AFP that he saw Tehran’s point.
“As Iran has said, the deployment of our troops to the region would amount to direct participation in an illegal war,” he said.
“There have been numerous violations of international law arising from US attacks on Iran, including the bombing of an elementary school and energy infrastructure,” he said.
