SEOUL - A SOUTH Korean army officer has been arrested and charged with corruption while serving in Iraq, the defence ministry said on Saturday.

The 30-year-old captain is suspected of accepting 25,000 dollars in cash as well as a camera and other goods in bribes from an Iraqi builder who then received favourable treatment, a ministry spokesman told AFP.

He said the soldier allowed the Iraqi builder to extend a deadline for construction at South Korea's military base in Iraq.

Military prosecutors arrested the captain - along with a master sergeant also suspected of involvement in the same case - late last month, shortly after South Korea withdrew its troops from Iraq, he said.

The spokesman refused to identify the arrested soldiers or the Iraqi firm.

South Korea ended its four-year non-combat mission in Iraq on December 19 with the return of the remaining 519 soldiers the northern Iraqi city of Arbil and a 102-member air support unit from Kuwait.

South Korea sent 3,600 engineering and medical troops to Iraq in 2004, the third largest foreign troop presence at the time.

The deployment was extended four times at the request of the United States, with troops gradually cut in number. -- AFP