SOCOM Looking for South Korean Partnership to Install Naval Radar
The U.S. installing this radar on Ieodo will only further validate the ROK’s claim to the submerged islet:
The Republic of Korea Navy’s 7,600-ton Aegis destroyer Yulgok Yi I patrols the waters around Ieodo, an underwater reef and home to a Korean ocean research station south of Jeju Island, in this file photo from Dec. 3, 2013, in the wake of China’s declaration of a new air defense identification zone that includes it. Yonhap
A U.S. Special Operations Command official identified a Korean research group as a potential partner for a grant to install a powerful maritime radar in the waters southwest of Jeju Island around Ieodo, a submerged reef where Korea has maintained a science station to monitor the seas.
The suggestion came after China was found setting up structures in the West Sea, where Ieodo is located and where the two countries’ exclusive economic zones (EEZs) overlap. (…….)
The offer comes as tensions sharpen over Ieodo, a submerged reef known in China as Suyan Rock, where Korea has operated Ieodo Ocean Research Station since 2003, monitoring oceanographic and atmospheric conditions and transmitting observations in real time. The site lies in waters controlled by Seoul but within the overlapping EEZs of both Korea and China.
For Washington, expanding surveillance would help track China’s increasingly assertive naval and coast guard patrols, and push allies to share intelligence in the region more closely.
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