SEOUL: South Korea was working Friday to get its citizens out of strife-torn Libya by land, sea and air, with a naval ship headed for the North African nation and three charter flights mounted.
In central Seoul, dozens of demonstrators trampled on pictures of Libyan leader Moamer Kadhafi outside the country's de facto embassy and delivered a message condemning the killing of protesters.
A chartered Korean Air B-747 jumbo jet with a capacity of 330 was scheduled to arrive in Tripoli Friday evening Libya time, the transport ministry said.
An Egypt Air charter flight had arrived in the Libyan capital and was preparing to return to Cairo carrying 198 South Koreans, the foreign ministry said.
Another chartered plane from the same airline was due to depart Cairo for the central Libyan city of Sirt and collect 68 Koreans.
A South Korean warship on anti-piracy duty off Somalia has been diverted to help the evacuation in case the airport closes and is expected to arrive next week, the defence ministry said.
An estimated 1,400 South Koreans were working in Libya, mostly for their country's construction firms, before the violence began.
A spate of attacks on the construction sites heightened fears for the Koreans, and Seoul has urged all citizens without urgent business to leave.
Some 77 South Koreans plan to leave for Tunisia by land later Friday, a foreign ministry official told Yonhap news agency.
In the east, 56 have left by land and arrived in Egypt and 50 others left Benghazi aboard a Turkish ship.
At Libya's economic cooperation office in Seoul a large portrait of Kadhafi previously on display inside the building had been replaced by a map, an AFP reporter saw.
The building still flew the green flag of Kadhafi's government. Staff could not immediately be reached by phone to say whether they still back the leader.
About 70 demonstrators, mainly from Arab nations, marched from a mosque in Seoul's Itaewon district to the building, urging staff to change the flag and shut down operations.
Protesters in the North African nation have adopted an earlier flag, which was scrapped after Kadhafi seized power in a 1969 coup.
"Get out!" "Leave!" the Seoul demonstrators shouted in Arabic, waving banners reading "Stop mass killing" and stomping on pictures of Kadhafi.
"We hate Kadhafi. Many people have died because of him. He is a terrorist like Hitler," said one of them, a Moroccan with Korean nationality.
Demonstrators demanded they be allowed to deliver a message written in Arabic on the back of a poster showing a dead protester to the head of the mission.
An official received it through a gap in a steel shutter over the main door.
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