(EDITORIAL from Korea Times on Dec. 19)

Unqualified Navy leader
Law enforcement should step up probe into military

The state auditing agency has asked the Ministry of National Defense to take disciplinary action against Chief of Naval Operations Admiral Hwang Ki-chul over a corruption scandal involving a salvage and rescue ship.

The Board of Audit and Inspection (BAI) said the Navy chief was negligent in reviewing documents related to the purchase of a sonar system for the 3,500-ton salvage ship, Tongyeong, when he served as the head of the vessel project division at the Defense Acquisition Program Administration (DAPA) in 2009.

The BAI launched its probe into the ship project earlier this year following the deadly sinking of the ferry Sewol, and found that Hwang approved the acquisition of the ship's hull-mounted outdated sonar system even though it failed to meet the military's required operational capabilities. Hwang is also suspected of letting the contracting procedure go ahead although he knew that a U.S. firm that won the contract refused to submit key related documents.

The Tongyeong was completed in September 2012 at a cost of 159 billion won, but the Navy refused to accept delivery of the vessel from its builder, Daewoo Shipbuilding and Marine Engineering, alleging that the ship's sonar didn't work properly. As it turned out later, the military paid as much as 4.1 billion won for the sonar, an outdated model worth only 200 million won that had not been used since the 1970s.

Hwang reportedly explained that he could not be aware of the technical aspects of the sonar, but that cannot be an excuse considering that he was in charge of the project at DAPA. He also should have suspended the project had he been told about the possible problems in advance.

The BAI failed to confirm Hwang's irregularities and just demanded a non-binding punishment against him. And the defense ministry reportedly has yet to determine the level of its disciplinary action, but one has to conclude that he has lost his qualifications as the leader of our naval forces.

This is all the more so, given that the bungled purchase of the sonar was an occasion for the government to launch broad-based investigations into the entrenched corruption in our defense industry. Prosecutors investigated the Tongyeong case and indicted nine individuals linked to the acquisition of the salvage ship's faulty parts.

Also, the ship, which was set to be delivered to the Navy last December, was not deployed on schedule, which would cause an additional cost of 50 billion won. It's needless to say that the Tongyeong could not be mobilized for operations to rescue the Sewol victims.

No wonder that the public is at a loss for words these days, seeing our armed forces beset with a string of scandals -- incessant bullying that leads even to the deaths of soldiers, sexual abuse in the barracks and collusive links between officers and defense firms.

It's a shame that taxpayers' money has been wasted because of corrupt and incompetent military officers. All this requires law enforcement to step up investigations into the military.
(END)