South Korea has announced $500,000 in humanitarian assistance to Iran, to be channelled through the International Committee of the Red Cross, Seoul's foreign ministry said Tuesday. The decision follows a weekend diplomatic mission in which South Korea dispatched a special envoy to Tehran, partly to secure the safety of South Korean-linked vessels and crew stranded in the Strait of Hormuz (the strategic waterway connecting the Persian Gulf to the Arabian Sea). The aid package is the latest in a series of regional contributions by Seoul, which last month sent $2 million in humanitarian support to Lebanon.