Korea — Navy and Marine Corps to join Cobra Gold

The Kore­an Navy and Marine Corps depart from a base in Busan via a 2,600-ton land­ing craft on Jan. 26 to par­tic­i­pate in a multi­na­tion­al mil­i­tary exer­cise called “Cobra Gold 2012” in Thai­land with six oth­er coun­tries.

The Kore­an Navy and Marine Corps depart from Busan base via land­ing craft on Jan. 26 to join multi­na­tion­al mil­i­tary exer­cise in Thai­land. Pro­vid­ed by the Kore­an Navy Click to enlarge

Co-host­ed by the Unit­ed States and Thai­land since 1981, the 13-day-long annu­al drill focus­es on enhanc­ing so-called human­i­tar­i­an civic actions. 

Along with six coun­tries join­ing the drill, forces from nine oth­ers coun­tries, includ­ing Rus­sia, Chi­na and the Nether­lands, are going to par­tic­i­pate in the exer­cise as observers. 

Korea sent one Korea Amphibi­ous Assault Vehi­cle and some 320 troops includ­ing 180 marines to Thai­land to fos­ter multi­na­tion­al joint oper­a­tion capabilities. 

In an attempt to car­ry out sta­ble mil­i­tary oper­a­tions in prepa­ra­tion for dis­putes or wars in one of sev­en nations, the joint drill will be main­ly con­duct­ed with three major oper­a­tions — human­i­tar­i­an civic actions, com­mand post exer­cise and field train­ing exer­cise. For two days from Feb. 5, engi­neer­ing and med­ical assis­tance oper­a­tions are sched­uled to be imple­ment­ed in five dif­fer­ent regions. The com­mand post exer­cise is slat­ed to begin on Feb. 7. 

Four­teen Kore­an Navy and Marine Corps offi­cers are going to join joint senior staff group and train multi­na­tion­al mil­i­tary actions deal­ing with attacks from ene­mies. They will also par­tic­i­pate in oper­a­tions relat­ed to end­ing dis­putes under autho­riza­tion from the Unit­ed Nations secu­ri­ty council. 

For three days from Feb. 8, the Kore­an forces will per­form land­ing and assault exer­cise using its amphibi­ous assault vehi­cle. The field train­ing exer­cise is going to be car­ried out for sev­en days from Feb. 11. 

In addi­tion, Kore­an forces will pro­vide civ­il ser­vice by prac­tic­ing vol­un­teer ser­vice in an orphan­age man­aged by Thai­land Navy. 

“The Navy and Marine Corps will take advan­tage of the exer­cise to boost imple­men­ta­tion capa­bil­i­ties on multi­na­tion­al and human­i­tar­i­an civic oper­a­tions,” said Cpt. Lee Jeong-hyun, the com­man­der of Kore­an forces par­tic­i­pat­ing the drill. “We will lay foun­da­tion for Kore­an Navy to devel­op into Navy that can car­ry out oper­a­tions any­time and anywhere.” 

Source:
Min­istry of Nation­al Defense, Repub­lic of Korea 

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