South Korean Military News, Reports, Data, etc.

manqiangrexue said:

This is pretty telling of US intentions. If they're more "concerned" about South Korean safety than the South Koreans are, then there's definitely something else there that doesn't concern the Koreans (ie. spying on China). The picture's getting clearer now; US wants to force its own military system down the throat of a country that doesn't want it in order to achieve its own selfish purposes. If it's just worried about the safety of the American soldiers there, it can easily tell the South Koreans that if THAAD can't be there to protect American troops, then the troops need to go home to safety. Unless... the troops are there for a different, non-Korean reason as well...

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WORLD NEWS | Fri Jun 16, 2017 | 6:41am EDT
Their life disrupted, South Korean grannies vow to fight THAAD till the end

By Christine Kim | SOSEONG-RI, SOUTH KOREA
In Soseong-ri, a small farming village of about 80 residents in southern South Korea, a band of elderly women is at the forefront of protests against the deployment of a U.S. anti-missile system next to their neighborhood.

A dozen or so women, in their 60s to 80s, stand watch each day around the clock to make sure no military vehicles enter the deployment site through the only road to it -- a former golf course owned by a leading conglomerate, the Lotte Group.

The vigil has forced the U.S. military to use helicopters instead to shuttle fuel and supplies to the site hosting the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system.

South Korea's former conservative government agreed with the United States to deploy the battery to counter growing threats from North Korean missiles. New liberal President Moon Jae-in had promised to review the controversial decision during his successful campaign for the May 9 election.

Last week, Moon ordered full deployment be suspended while the government reviews how the system will affect the area's environment. But there is no intention to change the deployment decision and elements of the battery, including two launchers already installed at the site, will stay, his government said.

The women, who brandish canes and umbrellas at the military helicopters and shout for them to go away every time one flies through the village, say they have no interest in the politics of the deployment.

But they protest, longing for the peace they had before.

"I can't sleep. I'm taking sedatives at night but I still get only two hours of sleep," said 87-year-old Na Wi-bun, who lives within a kilometer (0.62 mile) of the site and says she can hear the generator that powers THAAD humming around the clock.

Na goes to the town hall every day, a refuge to a group of women as well as a number of civic groups protesting the deployment.

"During the daytime, we used to farm and later go to the town hall and us grandmothers would spend time together. Now there's no day and night for us. I live at the town hall now," said 81-year-old Do Geum-ryeon. Most of the villagers are farmers of chamoe, or Korean melon.

Do, who moved to the village 61 years ago, said she sustained bruises fighting against police in late April, trying to keep U.S. military trailers full of THAAD components from passing through the village at early dawn.

"On my dying breath, I'm going to tell them to take THAAD away," she said.

LONG FIGHT AHEAD

On the site now are two launchers and a powerful X-band radar that constitute THAAD. The launchers are visible to the naked eye from a mountain peak roughly two to three kilometers away and the generator can be heard from the mountain.

Visitors who scale the 600-meter (0.37 mile) peak to look at THAAD are shooed away by South Korean police holed up in a guard post near the summit.

Soseong-ri town head, Lee Seok-ju, said he has warned villagers of a long fight ahead.

"I see this going on for at least two years, and at longest, even five. If this was going to end in one or two days, we would have fought tooth and nail, but we're saving our energy for the long run," Lee said.

Soseong-ri is part of North Gyeongsang Province, long known for being a conservative stronghold. With THAAD, that has changed.

When conservative candidate Park Geun-hye was elected as president in 2012, voter support stood near 90 percent for her in Seongju County, where Soseong-ri is located. In the most recent presidential election in May, support for the conservative candidate from Park's party fell to 56 percent.

Most Soseong-ri villagers voted for Moon or the other liberal candidate, Ahn Cheol-soo, Lee said.

That includes 67-year-old Kim Jeom-sook, who farms chamoe with her husband.

"THAAD must go. Sometimes I look up and I am so frightened some of things dangling from the helicopters will fall on us," Kim said.

Her 73-year-old husband, Lee Mu-hwan, said their business has not been affected by THAAD yet but prices have declined in past years due to oversupply and so they cannot risk another hit. They earn roughly 10 million won ($8,901.55) a year from melon farming, after expenses.

Kim, whose grandfather died in the 1950-1953 Korean War, said THAAD would be of no use if North Korea is determined to strike the South.

"If North Korea wants to boom boom boom, they can hit everywhere and create a sea of fire. I'm sure this area will turn like that too if they want," said Kim.

(Reporting by Christine Kim, Editing by Soyoung Kim and Bill Tarrant)

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FORBIN said:

Minelayer Nampo
View attachment 39602

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South Korean navy receives new minelayer

The Republic of Korea Navy (RoKN) has received a new minelayer from local shipbuilder Hyundai Heavy Industries (HHI), as the government in Seoul seeks to enhance the country's mine warfare capabilities.

Named Nampo (with pennant number 570), the 114.3 m-long vessel was delivered to the RoKN in a ceremony held at the company's Ulsan shipyard, South Korea's Defense Acquisition Program Administration (DAPA) said on 9 June.

The vessel, which has a full load displacement of 4,240 tonnes, will enter service in early 2018 after undergoing trials for seven months. Nampo is the first vessel of the class, with at least one more ship expected, according to Jane's Fighting Ships .

Once commissioned, Nampo will be the second indigenously manufactured minelayer operated by the RoKN.

The navy currently operates the 103.8 m-long minelayer RoKS Wonsan , which has been in service since 1997.

Launched on 27 May, Nampo was built under the MLS-II programme, which called for a mine warfare vessel featuring radar cross-section (RCS) reducing characteristics.

Based on South Korea's Future Frigate Experimental (FFX) design, the vessel has a crew of 120 and can accommodate a medium-sized helicopter in its hangar.

Nampo can reach a top speed of 23 kt and has a standard range of 4,500 n miles at 13 kt.

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South Korea launches Light Armed Helicopter first prototype assembly

According to the local news agency Yonhap, South Korea said Tuesday it has started to assemble the first prototype of a light armed helicopter with the goal of conducting a test flight in 2019. The country's Defense Acquisition Program Administration, the country's arms procurement agency, launched the development project in June 2015 to replace the aging 500MD and AH-1S choppers in partnership with Korea Aerospace Industries.

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South Korea's DAPA Orders Additional PKX-B Fast Attack Craft for ROK Navy

South Korea's Defense Acquisition Program Administration (DAPA) has announced that it has entered into a contract with South Korean shipbuilder Hanjin Heavy Industries & Construction (HHIC) on June 28 for the construction of additional 'B' variants of the Patrol Killer Experimental (PKX) fast attack craft. The value of the contract is 255.9 billion won and calls for the construction of ships 5 to 8 in the series.

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The U.S. tends to avoid talk of a first strike against North Korea but pre-emptive action called the “Kill Chain” is part of the official and public national defense strategy of South Korea.

The stark difference between Seoul and Washington on the ultimate form of deterrence against North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un is an example of the many issues in dispute in the once-solid U.S.-South Korea alliance.

Those differences will the subject of “frank and serious” discussions in White House talks between President Donald Trump and new South Korean President Moon Jae-in, a senior White House official said on background Wednesday.

Moon, a 64-year-old human rights lawyer elected in early May, arrived in Washington Wednesday. His first stop was at the National Museum of the

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in

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, Va., where he will join with Gen. Robert Neller, the Marine Commandant, to honor those who

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.

Moon’s parents were among the refugees who were evacuated from Hongnam in North Korea to South Korea after the battle.

Trump and Moon are to hold their first face-to-face meeting at the White House Thursday followed by dinner. At the top of the agenda is “the very urgent threat” posed by North Korea’s

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aimed at developing a nuclear Intercontinental Ballistic Missile capable of hitting the U.S. mainland and its buildup of conventional forces, the senior White House official said.

“There will be some differences in the way they want to approach that. That’s fine,” the official said of Trump and Moon, but the two were on the same wavelength as to “overarching goals,” meaning the dismantlement of the North’s nuclear and missile programs.

Moon has expressed an openness to dialogue with the North under the “right conditions.” During the campaign, Trump called Kim Jong-un a “bad dude” and a “maniac,” but also said he might be willing to meet with Kim over a hamburger to defuse tensions on the peninsula.

Moon has also

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of a full battery of the U.S.

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Terminal High Altitude Area Defense System (THAAD) anti-missile system pending an indefinite environmental study.

“I don’t think that is necessarily a major point” of contention, the official said of the THAAD deployment. Two of the six launchers in a full THAAD battery are now in place on a former golf course south of Seoul. The official said Moon had already said deploying the full battery was not a “reversal” on THAAD but rather a pause to allay environmental concerns.

The official did not discuss potential military options against North Korea, saying that Trump for now was focused on ratcheting up diplomatic and economic pressure on the North “to change their calculus. Right now we see no evidence” that Kim Jong-un was backing away from developing a nuclear ICBM “explicitly designed to threaten America,” the official said.

The question then is what the U.S. and South Korea would do once the North developed the capability and a suspected ICBM was sitting on the launch pad.

Retired Army Gen. Walter Sharp, the former commander of U.S.-Forces Korea and the United Nations command, ventured an answer last December — attack the missile site.

The missile should be destroyed, Sharp said, and the U.S. must also be ready to respond with overwhelming force if North Korea retaliated. “If he (Kim) responds back after we take one of these missiles out,” Kim should know “that there is a lot more coming his way, something he will fear,” Sharp said.

“I think we’re to that point that we need to have that capability. I am to that point,” Sharp said. He said the U.S. could not risk relying solely on anti-missile defenses to counter North Korean long-range missiles

Sharp spoke at a panel discussion on challenges from North Korea at an all-day forum sponsored by the Center for Strategic and International Studies on the national security issues would confront Trump.

Others on the panel, while sharing Sharp’s concerns about the North Korean nuclear threat, worried about the aftermath of a pre-emptive strike. Despite North Korea’s nuclear tests, “there is potential in diplomacy,” said Christine Wormuth, the former undersecretary of Defense for policy in the Obama administration.

“I’m concerned about pre-emptive action on the launch pad,” Wormuth said. “What does Kim Jong-un do in response? I worry quite a bit about our ability to sort of manage a potential retaliation.”

Defense Secretary Jim Mattis and Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Joseph Dunford were also worried. “It would be a war like nothing we have seen since 1953, and we would have to deal with it with whatever level of force was necessary,” Mattis told the House Armed Services Committee in June 12 testimony.

“There’s 25 million people in Seoul, and 300,000 of those are Americans who are within range of thousands of rockets, missiles and artillery pieces along the border,” Dunford said.

“I don’t have any doubt in my mind, if we go to war with North Korea, that we will win the war,” he said, but he warned that “we will see casualties unlike anything we’ve seen in 60 or 70 years.”

Dunford said that the bulk of the casualties would come “in the first three, five, seven days of the war, where all those people in the greater Seoul area are exposed to the North Korean threat that we will not be able to mitigate initially.”

Since the 1953 armistice on the peninsula, the Pentagon, the service branches, the Army’s Training and Doctrine Command (TRADOC), South Korea’s Ministry of Defense and the think tanks have gamed out how a war with North Korea would progress. Their analyses vary little from Dunford’s blunt assessment on the opening stage of a conflict

A 324-page white paper issued by South Korea’s Ministry Defense on Dec. 31, 2016, outlined a three-pronged strategy against the North to begin with a pre-emptive strike to stop what was perceived as an imminent attack.

“In the face of gradually increasing nuclear and missile threats from North Korea, the ROK (Republic of Korea) military is strengthening its deterrence and response capabilities. A three-axis system composed of the Kill Chain, Korea Air and Missile Defense (KAMD) and the Korea Massive Punishment and Retaliation (KMPR) strategy is being put in place,” the paper said.

The Kill Chain would launch a series of air, naval and missile strikes to prevent an imminent attack on Seoul. To back up the Kill Chain, South Korea was also considering the lease of a reconnaissance satellite, possibly from Israel or other countries, to obtain information independently from the U.S. on a possible imminent attack from the North, a Defense Ministry official told the Korea Times.

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Construction of a 3,000 tons submarine, the 3rd, Chang Bogo-III class

On Friday, the Navy began construction of a 3,000-ton submarine with six ballistic missile tubes, the third Chang Bogo-III submarine, Batch-I, at the Hyundai Heavy Industries shipyard Ulsan.

A ceremony will be held this morning by cutting a steel plate used to build the submarine. This Chang Bogo-III class submarine is the first to be built with local technology. The first and second submarines of the same class are being built by Daewoo Shipbuilding & Martime Engineering (DSME) in Geoje in the south of the country.

The construction of the three Chang Bogo-III class submarines, Batch-I, will be completed successively between 2020 and 2024. The submarine will be equipped with a ballistic missile with a range greater than 500km, called Hyunmoo-2B . Currently, the Defense Acquisition Program Administration (DAPA) verifies the performance of the sonar and combat system of the Chang Bogo-III submarine.

The DAPA said that this third submarine will be built by Hyundai Heavy Industries instead of DSME, "which means that an additional shipyard will build the Chang Bogo-III submarine," "this allows a sub- In the event of war and shows the international competitiveness of the sector.

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Hours after North Korea conducted what may be its most successful missile test yet, the U.S. Army and its partners in the Republic of Korea conducted a combined exercise that fired missiles into the territorial waters of South Korea.

The combined event was designed to exercise “assets countering North Korea’s destabilizing and unlawful actions,” according to a statement from the U.S. military.

The exercise took place Wednesday local time, just one day after the North Korean missile test. It utilized the Army Tactical Missile System and the ROK army’s Hyunmoo Missile II. The exercise fired missiles into South Korean waters along the East Coast.

“The system can be rapidly deployed and engaged,” according to the statement from U.S. Forces-Korea and the U.S. Army’s 8th Army. “The deep strike precision capability enables the ROK-U.S. alliance to engage the full array of time critical targets under all weather conditions.”

The U.S. and South Korea remain “committed to peace and prosperity on the Korean Peninsula and throughout the Asia-Pacific,” the statement also said, adding that the U.S. commitment to the defense of South Korea is “ironclad.”

"The United States strongly condemns [North Korea's] escalatory launch of an intercontinental ballistic missile," Chief Pentagon Spokeswoman Dana White said in a statement Tuesday. "We are monitoring and continuing to assess the situation in close coordination with our regional allies and partners."

The launch demonstrates that North Korea "poses a threat to the United States and our allies," White said. "Together with the Republic of Korea, we conducted a combined exercise to show our precision fire capability."

On Tuesday, North Korea fired an intermediate-range weapon that could be powerful enough to reach Alaska. It's Pyongyang's latest step in a push for nuclear weapons capable of hitting any part of the United States.

While some details are still unclear, the launch seems designed to send a political warning to Washington and its chief Asian allies, Seoul and Tokyo, even as it allows North Korean scientists a chance to perfect their still-incomplete nuclear missile program.

It also came on the eve of the U.S. Independence Day holiday, days after the first face-to-face meeting of the leaders of South Korea and the United States, and ahead of a global summit of the world's richest economies.

Officials say the missile fired from North Phyongan province, in the North's western region, flew for about 40 minutes, which would be longer than any other similar tests previously reported, and covered about 930 kilometers (580 miles). South Korean analysts say it's likely that it was a retest of one of two intermediate-range missiles launched earlier this year.

One U.S. missile scientist, David Wright, estimated that the missile, if the reported time and distance are correct, could have a possible maximum range of 6,700 kilometers (4,160 miles), which could put Alaska in its range if fired at a normal trajectory.

North Korea has a reliable arsenal of shorter-range missiles, but is still trying to perfect its longer-range missiles. Some analysts believe North Korea has the technology to arm its short-range missiles with nuclear warheads, but it's unclear if it has mastered the technology needed to build an atomic bomb that can fit on a long-range missile. It has yet to test an ICBM, though it has previously conducted long-range satellite launches that critics say are covers meant to test missile technology.

President Donald Trump responded on Twitter: "North Korea has just launched another missile. Does this guy have anything better to do with his life? Hard to believe that South Korea and Japan will put up with this much longer. Perhaps China will put a heavy move on North Korea and end this nonsense once and for all!"

"This guy" presumably refers to North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. China is North Korea's economic lifeline and only major ally, and the Trump administration is pushing Beijing to do more to push the North toward disarmament.

Just last week South Korean President Moon Jae-in and U.S. President Donald Trump met for the first time and vowed to oppose North Korea's development of atomic weapons.

Japan's government said the missile was believed to have landed in Japan's exclusive economic zone in the Sea of Japan, but no damage to ships or aircraft in the area was reported.

Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe sharply criticized North Korea for the launch. "The latest launch clearly showed that the threat is growing," Abe said.

The Korean Peninsula has been divided between the American-backed South and the authoritarian North since before the 1950-53 Korean War. Almost 30,000 U.S. troops are stationed in South Korea.

Tuesday's launch is the first by the North since a June 8 test of a new type of cruise missile that Pyongyang says is capable of striking U.S. and South Korean warships "at will."

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US-ROK alliance demonstrate exercise utilized the U.S. Army MGM-140 Army Tactical Missile System (ATACMS) and the Republic of Korea (ROK) Hyunmoo Missile II, which fired missiles into territorial waters of South Korea along the East Coast, on July 4, 2017.

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