South Korea rebuffs Trump’s ‘Project Freedom’ call after Hormuz ship fire
A UN mandate and a global coalition are required before Seoul joins Trump’s mission to reopen the strait, officials indicate
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Published: 2:30pm, 5 May 2026Updated: 9:16am, 6 May 2026
When a South Korean cargo ship exploded and caught fire in the Strait of Hormuz late on Monday, Donald Trump wasted no time declaring what he thought it meant.
“Perhaps it’s time for South Korea to come and join the mission!” the US president wrote on his social media platform Truth Social, invoking the incident as fresh justification for Seoul to send naval forces to the embattled waterway.
Seoul’s answer, for now, has been a polite but firm no – or at least, not yet.
The explosion occurred aboard a Panama-flagged vessel operated by HMM, one of South Korea’s largest shipping firms, at around 8.40pm Seoul time on Monday.
The ship was anchored in waters near the United Arab Emirates with 24 crew members aboard: six South Koreans and 18 foreign nationals.
