The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.
Possible keep. If this article is about the ROKN SEALS overall, then it should probably be kept. I would think that the ROKN SEALs would merit an article in Wikipedia. It is not clear from the title or the content of the article if the 56th Special Warfare Squadron comprises all of the SEALs, or if it is one unit of the SEALs. If the 56th and the SEALs are one and the same, then the article should probably be moved to Republic of Korea Navy SEALs. •••Life of Riley (talk) 21:47, 1 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Changing my stance to Keep, per references found by RayAYang below. This unit is apparently the ROK Navy Special Forces (i.e., SEALS). The ROKN is a significant organization, and I think their special forces are worthy of an article. We certainly could use more information if it can be found. •••Life of Riley (talk) 05:39, 6 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Speed Delete - Little or no encyclopedic content. If you wish to elaborate on Korea's special forces under a military article, that would be more viable than just a listing of some special force units that lack notability other than they're in the military and are used by them according to their training. Mkdwtalk03:53, 6 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Weak keep They do exist, and occasionally get coverage. These are apparently the ROKN Seals [1]. However, the South Korean variant appears to keep a much lower profile than their American counterparts, and I'm not sure that sources will materialize to bring this article above a stub. Ray (talk) 04:15, 6 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Comment/No Stance: Although I do not disagree that a Korean special forces unit that corresponds with the article's description exists, I'm troubled that this article is mostly unverified at this point in time. I've done some searching in the Jane's Information Group database at my local university, and I can find no results for "56th Special Warfare Squadron" or "ROKN Seals", and no meaningful results for any other combination of the 56th Squadron or the term 'seals' with search terms for the Korean Navy.
SEAL is specifically a U.S. Navy term and is probably not used by other navies to designate their special forces units. Special warfare and special forces are more generic terms but probably hard to pin down through an internet search, because of the non-specific nature of the words. •••Life of Riley (talk) 16:11, 6 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Understood. I tried "seal" because that was the term used in the article and in the websites found so far. I'm think (but I'm not sure if) I tried "special forces", but "special warfare" also came up with no meaningful results for the 56th or a more general special forces organisation in Korea. -- saberwyn01:04, 7 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Delete A cursory gsearch should be able to establish notability, and that's certainly not the case. If it's a super-secret unit with few third-party mentions then even that would be notable, but sadly that's not the case either. This might very well be a WP:HOAX. My copy of The Encyclopedia of the World's Special Forces (ISBN 0-7607-3939-0) states in the South Korea section of Special Forces at Sea that they do have two NAVSPECWAR-like outfits: "Marine Corps SEALs" with three divisions (1st, 2nd and 3rd) with three batallions each (capability closer to Marine Force Recon; and three teams of Navy SEALs modeled around the US Navy units. Nowhere is the "56th Special Warfare Squadron" mentioned. The book was published in 2003. Hoax, I say. §FreeRangeFrog19:26, 6 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.