Wi Sung-lac, head of the Office of National Security at Cheong Wa Dae, said on the 13th that regarding the weapon that struck the "HMM Namu-ho" in the Strait of Hormuz, "we do not have grounds to conclude it was a drone," adding, "there are several possibilities, including a missile."
Some experts are speculating that the unidentified flying object that attacked the Namu-ho was an Iranian self-destructing drone such as the "Shahed-136," but there is still no basis to confirm this. As the government conducts additional investigations into the attacker and the model, it means that, at this point, the likelihood of a drone attack is seen as low.
At a Korea Association of Newspapers and Broadcasting Editors' invitation roundtable held at the Press Center in Jung-gu, Seoul, that day, Wi answered this way to a question asking the "reason our government, unlike the UAE, is not stating the cause of the strike as a drone."
Regarding the United Arab Emirates (UAE) Foreign Ministry's defining and condemning the Namu-ho strike on the 11th (local time) as a "drone terror attack," Wi said, "I also saw what the UAE issued, but we are not refraining from specifying the form of the attack out of consideration for the UAE or any country," adding, "there is no other reason we are not specifying it as a drone right now. We simply need to judge by taking into account the inspections and investigation results so far and adding to them."
The Namu-ho's hull has been moved to Dubai, UAE, for repairs. Wi said, "If it was not a drone, it could be a missile, and all possibilities are open," and added, "there is no country that would be put in a difficult position if our government called the cause a drone." He also said, "Some say that, as we condemned (the act of attacking a civilian vessel), we did not specify the target of condemnation, but this too is a widespread practice," adding, "we can wait until the target of condemnation is identified, or we may not wait."
Earlier, at a Cheong Wa Dae briefing on the 11th, Wi said, "attacks on civilian vessels such as the HMM Namu-ho cannot be justified or tolerated," adding, "we strongly condemn them." However, he did not specify the attacker or the exact model and said, "we plan to identify them through a subsequent investigation."
Cheong Wa Dae also said that the term "summoning" was not appropriate regarding the Ministry of Foreign Affairs calling in Iran's Ambassador Saeed Koozechi, and that it was "communication" with a neighboring country. The point is that Iran is not being concluded as the attacker of the Namu-ho. A senior Cheong Wa Dae official said, "as I understand it, the format in which the Ministry of Foreign Affairs met with the Iranian ambassador was not 'summoning,'" adding, "it was communication and consultation with one of the countries in the vicinity that are related, and we did not hear or receive any new information from Iran."