Navy recruits toss an assistant instructor into the air in a ceremony to mark the completion of their training at a boot camp in Jinhae on the south coast on July 7, 2017. (Photo courtesy of the Navy) (Yonhap)
Here is another example of strategic messaging against North Korea that the Canadians are ready to stand with the ROK if needed:
Battleships from the Incheon Naval Sector Defense Command take part in a drill near Incheon and Ijak Island on June 14 and 15 to mark the month of national defense and veterans’ welfare. / Yonhap
South Korea said Monday it will hold a combined live-fire naval exercise with the United States and Canada this week in its southern waters.
Hosted by South Korea’s Maritime Task Flotilla Seven (MTF7), the three-day training exercise will be staged in waters near Jeju Island from Friday, according to the Navy.
It will involve five South Korean warships, including the Aegis cruiser DDG-992 Yulgok Yii, P-3C Orion maritime surveillance aircraft and Lynx multi-role planes as well as the USS Dewey (DDG-105), an Arleigh Burke-class guided missile destroyer from the U.S. Navy, and MH-60R helicopters.
Two major Canadian frigates — Winnipeg and Ottawa — and SH-3 choppers will also take part in the practice.
The three sides plan to hold various drills on interdiction, air defense, anti-submarine operations and ballistic missile detection, along with live-fire training, said the Navy. [Korea Times]
The ROK Naval Captain is claiming that the sex was consensual, but regardless the Captain shouldn’t be sleeping with a junior officer in the first place. However, I am not sure if the ROK military has any guidelines against such behavior; if not it should:
A female Navy lieutenant, under the purview of the Navy’s headquarters at the Gyeryongdae compound, was found dead in her home on 5:40 p.m. Wednesday.
While the naval military police view the incident as a suicide, they arrested a male navy captain under allegations of having sexually assaulted the lieutenant the night before.
Her colleagues attempted to reach her by phone after noting her absence in the workplace.
When they went to her home and found she had apparently hanged herself, they contacted military police.
Near her body was a memo saying, “I guess I’m leaving empty-handed like this,” and “By tomorrow, I won’t be a person of this world.”
“There are no signs of forced entry,” military police said.
“She told me she was raped by a superior,” a friend told her family, who then told police.
The military police arrested a naval captain who was at the domicile.
According to naval military police, the two officers drank into the night at a departmental dinner. Police suspect the captain raped her after she lost consciousness.
“I can’t remember clearly cause I was drunk,” he said, adding that while they had sex, he maintains it was consensual. [Joong Ang Ilbo]
Here is the latest on what is going on with the USS Carl Vinson otherwise known in the media as “Trump’s Armada”:
USS Carl Vinson
The USS Carl Vinson, a U.S. aircraft carrier, on Saturday started a joint naval drill with the South Korean Navy in the East Sea amid heightened tensions from North Korea’s failed ballistic missile launch earlier in the morning, defense officials here said.
“South Korea and U.S. strike forces began a drill in the East Sea from 6 p.m. today against the backdrop of the current security situation,” the South Korean Navy said.
No specific schedule for the rendezvous was released to the media yet, but the exercise is expected to continue until sometime next week.
At the core of the naval exercise lies the missile warning informational link exercise (LINKEX) that monitors, traces and intercepts any intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBM) from North Korea. [Yonhap]
Singer, actor and now soldier, Army Cpl. Lee Seung-ki (L) sings the chorus of a song during a ceremony at the National Cemetery in the central city of Daejeon on March 24, 2017, to commemorate South Korean soldiers killed in three major clashes with North Korea in the Yellow Sea. The government has designated the fourth Friday of March as the commemoration day for the fallen soldiers in the clashes, including the North’s torpedoing of the South Korean Navy corvette Cheonan in 2010, which killed 46 sailors. (Yonhap)
This is pretty significant that the US, ROK and Japanese Navies continue to do this interoperability missile defense exercises. Hopefully a new administration in the ROK does not stop ROK participation in the future:
The United States, South Korea and Japan kicked off naval missile-defense drills Friday, joining forces to counter the growing threat from North Korea.
The three-day exercise began amid fears that the North may test-fire an intercontinental ballistic missile or stage another provocation in connection with Donald Trump’s inauguration ceremony on Friday.
The Yokosuka, Japan-based guided-missile destroyer USS Stethem, Japan’s JDS Kirishima and South Korea’s Sejong the Great participated in missile detection and tracking drills in the waters off the divided peninsula and Japan. [Stars & Stripes]
The Korean navy’s P-3CK on patrol. / Courtesy of Twitter
A Korean navy’s P-3CK, a maritime patrol aircraft, accidentally dropped weapons into the East Sea on Sunday.
The accident happened around 6:10 a.m. during a patrol off the coast of Yangyang county, Gangwon Province, when a co-pilot accidentally pressed the emergency weapons release switch.
“One of the plane’s crew mistakenly touched the emergency weapons release switch instead of a buoy that detects submarine sound waves,” said a navy official. “The weapons were not armed and did not explode.”
The missing weapons include two harpoon missiles, two torpedoes and two depth charges and are worth about 4 billion won ($3.3 million).
The navy has sent a mine sweeper and salvage ship to salvage the weapons if possible. [Korea Times]
You can read more at the link, but I am surprised it is that easy to drop live missiles by pressing the wrong switch like this. You would think there would be some kind of safety mechanism over the switch.
A ceremony to decommission the 2,400-ton rescue ship Pyeongtaek is held at the military port of Jinhae, 410 kilometers southeast of Seoul, on Dec. 28, 2016. The ship served for 20 years after the South Korean navy took it over from the U.S. navy in 1997. The ship was mobilized into preventing the spread of a massive oil leak from a freighter on waters off the western county island of Taean in 2007 and salvaging the naval ship the Cheonan sunken by a North Korean torpedo attack in 2010. The ship will be delivered to its sister city of Pyeongtaek, 70 kilometers southwest of Seoul, for security exhibition. (Yonhap)
