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The Korea Coast Guard wants to build a forward base on Ulleung Island to respond rapidly to any emergency on the Dokdo islets that would require the dispatch of heavier vessels. The Coast Guard on Monday said it will build a special pier there as part of the Land, Transport and Maritime Affairs Ministry's phase-2 project for Ulleung Island's Sadong Port.
Sadong Port does now have a small pier designed for fishing and passenger boats, not large naval or Coast Guard ships, which took from 1994 until October last year to build.
The base would be on a 200 m-long section of the Sadong Port development. The length is needed if a 5,000 t-class ship, the largest the coast guard has, is to anchor there.
At present, a 1,500 t, a 3,000 t and a 5,000 t-class Coast Guard ship take turns to patrol waters near Dokdo around the clock, but in a bigger emergency extra ships would have to travel from faraway ports like Donghae or Pohang, which takes about seven hours. The forward base on Ulleung Island would cut that to some two-and-a-half hours.
When the base will be built is unclear. A ministry official said since it took 14 years to complete phase 1 of Sadong Port, it is difficult to predict when phase 2, which is a larger project, will be completed. He said if aggressive Japanese claims to Dokdo keep resurfacing at the rate they have, the government is likely to earmark a budget for it, but otherwise the money will probably be spent on other projects and construction could be "significantly delayed."
(englishnews@chosun.com )
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