Korea ties with Middle East military power Turkey continues to expand:
South Korea and Turkey on Tuesday signed an agreement on mutual logistics support, enabling smooth exchanges of military munitions during times of peace or war, the Defense Ministry said.
The agreement, officially called a memorandum of understanding, was signed by South Korea’s Vice Defense Minister Kim Jong-cheon and the visiting deputy commander of Turkey’s joint forces, Gen. Ergin Saygun.
“The two countries have discussed issues related to logistics cooperation, such as supplying munitions for their overseas missions in Iraq through local markets, at various opportunities,” the ministry said in a press release, noting Tuesday’s agreement will also help build military cooperation between the nations. [Yonhap]
For those that don’t know Turkey has a very well equipped military that is only being further modernized with the sell of Korean armaments such as the XK2 tank to the nation. International weapon sales is actually very big potential growth area for Korean businesses with the increasing quality of Korean defense products.
Here is something else I found interesting in the article though:
South Korea regularly provides its aging defense articles, including patrol boats and air force training jets, to developing nations such as Bangladesh, Mongolia and the Philippines at a nominal price of $100 per item.
Sell me a training jet for $100 bucks! I’m sure Nomad and his crew wouldn’t mind getting a new fishing boat for $100 bucks as well.
Popularity: 2%
10:44 pm on May 29th, 2008 1
“Sell me a training jet for $100 bucks!”
Sure. But can you afford the expensive parts and supplies that must be purchased for those jets?
12:23 am on May 30th, 2008 2
This whole thing is for PR purposes only. Korean junk sold for 100$ is worthless scrap.
6:55 am on May 30th, 2008 3
According to wikipedia, the ancestors of both Koreans and Turks are descended from Central Asia Mongoloids. Maybe the Koreans feel a kinship with the Turks.
8:03 pm on June 3rd, 2008 4
Korean and Turkish languages are said to be “genetically related” with similar grammar and some shared word roots, but the peoples themselves aren’t really related. And even if they are, it’s not only a very distant relationship, it’s pretty old too, as Turks of today are basically a huge mix of local ethnicities and they mostly look pretty darn Caucasian.
Good thing they fought side by side in the Korean War for the ancient time’s sake.
9:24 am on October 5th, 2008 5
[...] Korea and Turkey that began during the Korean War and has now advanced to the point Korea is supplying top defense equipment to the Turkish [...]