Korea and Indonesia marines vow to step up cooperation

Maj. Gen. Alfan Baharudin, com­man­der of the Indone­sian Marine Corps, on April 18 came to Korea at the invi­ta­tion of his coun­ter­part Lt. Gen. Lee Ho-yeon, com­man­der of the Kore­an Marine Corps, to dis­cuss strength­en­ing mil­i­tary coop­er­a­tion and deep­en­ing friend­ly rela­tions between the two marine corps.

On April 18, Lt. Gen. Lee Ho-yeon, sec­ond right, com­man­der of the Kore­an Marine Corps and Maj. Gen. Alfan Baharudin, com­man­der of the Indone­sian Marine Corps, review the hon­or guard. Pro­vid­ed by the Marine Corps Source: MND, Repub­lic of Korea

On the first day of his vis­it, com­man­der Alfan Baharudin vis­it­ed his coun­ter­part Lt. Gen. Lee at the Marine Corps headquarters. 

Short­ly after a friend­ly talk, they dis­cussed sev­er­al issues between the two marines such as mil­i­tary instruc­tor exchanges, Marine Corps doc­trine devel­op­ment con­fer­ences, Marine Corps per­son­nel exchange pro­gram and joint mil­i­tary training. 

The Indone­sian Marine Corps of a strength of 15,000 troops is made up of two marine forces, each com­mand­ed by a brigadier gen­er­al, one inde­pen­dent brigade, com­mand­ed by a colonel, and small­er train­ing and sup­port units. 

The two com­man­ders also exchanged the infor­ma­tion about each Marine Corps’ orga­ni­za­tion and mil­i­tary exercises. 

After­ward, on April 19 and 20, the Indone­sian com­man­der vis­it­ed the 1st Marine Corps Divi­sion first and then the Edu­ca­tion and Train­ing Group both to watch a demon­stra­tion of oper­at­ing the Kore­an Assault Amphibi­ous Vehi­cle (KAAV) and to per­son­al­ly board the vehicle. 

After­ward, he vis­it­ed Sam­sung Tech­win, a defense firm, to iden­ti­fy the excel­lence of Kore­an-man­u­fac­tured defense arms. 

The two coun­tries’ marines have con­duct­ed coop­er­a­tion in many ways since 2001 when a Pan-Pacif­ic Marine Corps com­man­dants’ con­fer­ence was held. 

In par­tic­u­lar, the rela­tion­ship between the two have been fur­ther cement­ed since 2009 when they signed an ‘Agree­ment on Deliv­er­ing LVT7A1’s between the Repub­lic of Korea and the Repub­lic of Indonesia.’ 

Accord­ing to the agree­ment, at that time, South Korea trans­ferred 10 used amphibi­ous land­ing craft of the LVT7A1 type to Indonesia. 

Source:
Min­istry of Nation­al Defense[MND], Repub­lic of Korea