This article is by Michael Lee and read by an artificial voice.

[EXPLAINER]
Outside exit 1 of Gangnam Station in southern Seoul, along a wide boulevard lined with glass skyscrapers, stands a modest stone marker engraved with the name of the street in Korean and Farsi: Teheran-ro, christened in 1977 after Iran's capital during a visit by then–Tehran Mayor Gholam-Reza Nikpey.
At the time, the gesture symbolized the rapidly growing relationship between South Korea and Iran. Today, however, the Teheran-ro marker is covered in posters of people killed during recent protests that rocked Iran — a reminder not only of the opposing political trajectories taken by Seoul and Tehran over the past five decades, but also of the gradual fraying of their relationship amid Washington's pressure on allies to isolate Tehran and Iran's suspected military ties to North Korea.
The conflict that erupted on Feb. 28 between Israel and the United States on one side and Iran on the other has once again drawn attention to Seoul's complicated position in the Middle East, where South Korea maintains a long, if increasingly strained, relationship with Tehran while also deepening its defense partnerships with other states in the region.
Officials in Seoul have responded to the outbreak of hostilities with cautious language that reflects those competing interests. Shortly after the first U.S. and Israeli airstrikes on Iran, the South Korean Foreign Ministry called on "all parties to make utmost efforts to de-escalate tensions." The government has also expressed concern for the safety of South Korean nationals in the region and the stability of global energy supplies.
While the ministry avoided endorsing Israel's stated rationale of preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons, it emphasized that Seoul remains "firmly committed to upholding the international nonproliferation regime" and "participating in efforts to resolve the Iranian nuclear issue."
Seoul's carefully worded statements belie its complex set of interests. South Korea faces a nuclear-armed North Korea, depends heavily on oil from the Persian Gulf and has built expanding defense partnerships across the Middle East. Those realities give Seoul strong incentives to pursue regional stability and restraint by the warring parties.
Yet the consequences of the crisis are also being felt far beyond the Gulf. For Iranian nationals living in South Korea, the escalating confrontation has stirred anxiety as they follow developments in their homeland.

How have Iranians in South Korea reacted?
The ongoing hostilities have divided the roughly 1,300 Iranians living in South Korea, who have held duelling rallies in Seoul in recent days.
For some, the death of Iran's theocratic ruler, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, in the opening salvo of the current conflict gave cause for celebration. During a rally on Sunday, Iranian residents called for the restoration of the country's pre-1979 monarchy as they waved the flags of the United States, Israel and prerevolutionary Iran in front of Gyeongbok Palace in downtown Seoul. For some participants, the U.S. and Israeli strikes represented the possible beginning of the end of the Islamic Republic.

"Under the mullahs, our suffering has been endless and invisible," said one Iranian resident who asked to remain anonymous for fear of reprisal, referring to Iran's ruling clerics.
"We don't want a government that lines the pockets of its allies in Gaza and Yemen but steals from us and crushes our voices at home," she added. "We want to be free and have better relations with the world."
Other Iranians have condemned the human cost of the bombings on their country. Filmmaker Komeil Soheili, who has lived in South Korea for seven years, said that he opposes both the Iranian government and the war itself at a rally in front of the U.S. Embassy in Seoul on March 2.
"I am against the dictatorship in Iran, but that does not justify war," he explained. "These are real bombs dropping on rea...