South Korea seeks to evade US-led sanctions against Iran's oil and banking sectors, citing the embargos merely hurt the East Asian country's economy, Press TV reported.
"Our goal is to reduce the effect of sanctions on our country's companies and not let our country's companies receive unfair or unjust treatment and we will negotiate in that perspective with the United States," South Korean Foreign Ministry spokesman Cho Byung-jae said.
The major concern for South Korea, the world's fifth largest oil importer, is its access to energy resources, as it imports around 10 percent of its crude oil from Iran.
Some South Korean refineries have indicated they plan to buy more oil from Iran in 2012.
On Dec. 31, 2011, U.S. President Barack Obama signed into law new sanctions against Tehran, seeking to penalize countries importing Iran's oil or doing transaction with the Central Bank of Iran (CBI).
EU foreign ministers also followed suit and during their latest meeting in Brussels on Jan. 23, they reached an agreement to ban oil imports from Iran, freeze the CBI assets within the bloc and ban the sales of diamonds, gold and other precious metals to the Islamic Republic.
The U.S., Israel, and their Western allies accuse Iran of pursuing a military nuclear program and have used this allegation as a pretext to convince the United Nations Security Council to impose four rounds of sanctions on Iran.
Rejecting the allegations, Iran says it has every right to peaceful nuclear activities as an International Atomic Energy Agency member state and a signatory to the Non Proliferation Treaty.
Edited by: S. Isayev