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.
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.”