South Korea hailed the capture of deposed Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein Sunday and held out hope that it would help stabilize the situation in war-devastated Iraq.

A Foreign Ministry spokesman expressed in a statement Seoul's hopes that the arrest of the ousted Iraqi president would help eradicate all future terrorism in Iraq and serve as an opportunity to bring about political stability, the improved livelihood of the Iraqi people, and the acceleration of post-war recovery and reconstruction.

Earlier in the day, the U.S. military in Iraq officially announced that Hussein had been captured in a raid on a farmhouse near his hometown of Tikrit Saturday night, local Iraqi time.