Seoul yesterday said that it had deployed a warship to Libya in an apparent show of force to secure the release of a South Korean kidnapped along with three Philippine nationals in the North African country.
The 4,000-tonne ROKS Munmu the Great, which participates in anti-piracy operations in the Gulf of Aden, was heading to Libya, officials said.
In addition to “carrying out its duty of protecting commercial vessels, [the ship] is also preparing for all possibilities, including the need for military support,” a South Korean Ministry of National Defense spokesman told reporters, without elaborating further.
The three Philippine engineers and the South Korean were abducted in an attack on a water project site in western Libya on July 6.
Their governments confirmed that they were featured in a video shared on social media this week.
The video, also posted by the SITE Intelligence Group, shows the four men addressing the camera in English. An armed guard is pictured squatting behind them in the sand, but their captors are not identified and the attack has not been claimed by any group.
It was not clear when the video was filmed.
“The Philippine embassy in Tripoli has confirmed that the three men in the video are the three Filipino technicians who [were] taken by armed men in Libya last month,” Philippine Department of Foreign Affairs spokesman Elmer Cato said.
A spokesman for Seoul’s presidential office said the government was doing “its utmost with all the resources the country has.”
“His country and his president have never once forgotten him,” spokesman Kim Eui-kyeom said in a statement.
“The government has been maintaining a close cooperation system with the government of Libya and other allies, such as the Philippines and the United States, since the day of the incident for his safety and release,” Kim said.
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