Text fwd: New S. Korean Naval Unit To Deploy to Somalia

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New S. Korean Naval Unit To Deploy to Somalia
By JUNG SUNG-KI
Published: 3 Mar 14:57 EST (19:57 GMT)

SEOUL - South Korea's Navy will send an anti-piracy unit to the Somalia littorals within weeks, its first overseas combat deployment, service officials said March 3.

The announcement followed the National Assembly's March 2 endorsement of a motion for deployment. It also followed days of rehearsal operations by the new unit, named Cheonghae, in the waters off the southern port city of Busan.

The Korean contingent includes a 4,500-ton KDX-II destroyer, a Lynx anti-submarine helicopter, rigid inflatable speedboats and 300 personnel, including 30 Underwater Demolition Team/SEAL forces. An explosive ordnance disposal team will also join the contingent.

During its planned six-month deployment, the unit will focus on escorting South Korean commercial ships through the Gulf of Aden, an effort to protect the nation's economic interests, said Cmdr. Yoo Young-shik, chief of the Navy's public affairs office.

If required, it will also monitor, inspect, stop and seize pirates' vessels as part of the Combined Task Force 151, a multinational naval task force with logistics facilities at Djibouti under the command of the Combined Forces Maritime Component Command based in Bahrain, Yoo said.

The task force is responsible for maritime security from the Red Sea down the east coast of Africa and into the Arabian Sea toward Pakistan and India.

Currently, the efforts to clamp down on piracy in the troubled waters include about 21 warships and five aircraft from Britain, Canada, China, Denmark, France, Greece, Germany, India, Malaysia, and the United States.

South Korean officials express confidence in the Navy's counterpiracy operations, citing the service's close-range combat skills accrued from decades of training to thwart North Korean ships.

The KDX-II destroyer is equipped with an Mk. 45 127mm gun, Harpoon ship-to-surface missiles, RAM Mk 31 ship-to-air guided missiles, a 30mm Goalkeeper system for engaging sea-skimming anti-ship missiles and torpedoes. Built in 2003, the 150-meter-long, 17-meter-wide ship has a top speed of 29 knots.

South Korean cargo ships have also been hijacked in recent years. Somali pirates held eight crewmembers of two Dongwon Fisheries tuna ships for four months before releasing them in 2006 for a ransom of $800. Two Daechang Fishing boats were hijacked in May last year, and their 25 crewmembers were released six months later.

In September, pirates kidnapped a cargo vessel carrying eight South Korean and 13 Myanmar crewmembers, releasing them the following month after the ship's owner paid a ransom.

The Somali pirates reportedly run sophisticated operations using high-tech equipment such as satellite phones and GPS receivers. They are known to receive information from contacts at ports in the Gulf of Aden and use speedboats with very powerful outboard motors to approach their targets. Sometimes the speedboats are launched from much larger "mother ships" on the high seas.

Located along the route of a crude-oil pipeline connecting the Red Sea to the Indian Ocean and racked by civil war, Somalia's coastline has become infamous for piracy. Each year, about 20,000 ships sail throughout the Gulf of Aden headed for the Suez Canal, an important shipping route for international trade that links Europe to the Middle East and Asia.

The International Maritime Organization counted 111 attacks in 2008 in the Arablic Sea near Somalia, the most notorious location for such activity.

A March 3 ceremony in Busan marked the commissioning of the new unit, the service said in a news release.

"The inauguration of the Cheonghae unit this year, which marks the 100th anniversary of the Navy's founder, the late Adm. Sohn Won-il, will serve as a starting point for our Navy to make history and build a naval power to sustain us over the next 100 years," Adm. Jung Ok-keun, South Korea's chief of naval operations, said in a speech at the ceremony at Naval Operations Command.

* Related Korean articles *

By the Center for Peace and Disarmament, People’s Solidarity for Participatory Democracy (PSPD),

__The answer by the Ministry of Defense of the South Korea to the 2nd public inquiry letter by the Center for Peace and Disarmament, regarding the dispatch plan to Somalia, Feb. 19, 2009
http://blog.peoplepower21.org/Peace/30765


__PSI(Proliferation Security Initiative)
http://blog.peoplepower21.org/Peace/tag/PSI