Aug. 16 (UPI) — South Korea was in the process of evacuating its last remaining citizen from Afghanistan late Monday after President Moon Jae-in ordered a complete evacuation, but the individual’s status remains limbo amid the chaos at the airport in Kabul.
Seoul’s foreign ministry said Monday a South Korean individual who had not left the country by Monday boarded a flight from Kabul Airport late evening and was about to be evacuated to a third country.
The Korean citizen’s flight was delayed as Afghans attempting to flee the country crowded onto the tarmac, forcing a halt in evacuation flights, Yonhap reported.
South Korea began to close its embassy in Afghanistan on Sunday, as a Taliban takeover of Kabul appeared to be imminent. The group said Monday it had seized control of the country.
South Korea’s foreign ministry said most of its embassy staff had been transferred to a third country in the Middle East. Only South Korean Ambassador to Afghanistan Choi Tae-ho and two other diplomats stayed behind to assist the evacuation of the last remaining citizen, the report said.
Choi reportedly began to make arrangements after an ally, possibly the United States or a NATO member state, told him to leave Afghanistan.
“The message was about the need for diplomatic staff to move to a Kabul airport and the need to leave the country,” a South Korean diplomatic source said.
Korean diplomats destroyed classified documents and temporarily shuttered its mission in Kabul, before boarding a U.S. military helicopter made available to the officials, under a memorandum of understanding signed earlier this year with the United States, according to Yonhap.
Moon said Monday ahead of the evacuation that every last South Korean citizen and diplomat must safely leave Afghanistan, CBS No Cut News reported.
Presidential spokeswoman Park Kyung-mee said that Moon had been receiving minute-by-minute updates on the situation in the southwest Asian nation.