South Korea hopes that the new base will help strengthen its territorial rights on Dokdo as the base would enable its ships to reach the islands quickly.
The Jeju naval base is intended to serve two objectives: to protect the country from possible missile attacks from North Korea and to allow the United States to station Aegis class destroyers.
While keeping the doors open for negotiations, the US and South Korea are unlikely to relax any of the terms and conditions they have set for Pyongyang.
In response to increasing North Korean hostilities, South Korea’s Defence Minister Kim Kwan-jin unveiled a 73-point military reform measures in early March 2011
The temporary hope of peace returning to the Korean peninsula following North Korea’s peace overtures dissipated no sooner than it started when North Korean negotiators walked out of the meeting room at the DMZ in Panmunjam.
North Korea’s offer of a dialogue is unlikely to elicit a positive response from South Korea which instead is militarily drawing closer to Japan to enhance deterrence.
Soon after naming the North Korean regime as its “enemy”, South Korea has, quite abruptly, invoked the desirability of reverting to the Six-Party Talks.
Kan’s statement about sending the SDF to the Korean peninsula to rescue Japanese citizens and people of Japanese origin in the event of an emergency has raised the spectre of a possible revival of Japanese militarism.
South Korea’s Naval Base on Ulleung Island
South Korea hopes that the new base will help strengthen its territorial rights on Dokdo as the base would enable its ships to reach the islands quickly.