Or 100 U.S. dollars. That’s the price Korea is asking for each of three decommissioned 150-ton patrol boats Seoul is selling to the new Kazakh navy.
The ROKN announced on Feb. 28 that in order to promote military cooperation between Korea and Kazakhstan and help the Central Asian state create a navy, it had decided to hand over to the Kazakhs three decommissioned Chamsuri-class PKM patrol boats.
The three boats will cost Astana a whopping 300 dollars American. The ROKN had purchased the boats for about 4 billion won each, or roughly 4 million U.S. dollars.
The Chosun Ilbo reports that 100 dollars is apparently the going rate for sales of obsolete military equipment to third countries. When Korea pawned off 18 used patrol boats and eight F-5 fighter jets to the Philippines, they got 100 dollars per vehicle. The government is also considering selling obsolete F-5A/B fighters to Mexico and Poland.
As for the Kazakhs, they are pushing the establishment of a navy to protect their Caspian Sea oil fields. Korea agreed to sell them patrol boats last year.
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4 Comments
Garage sale diplomacy.
When do you think they’d be selling the F-15K for a hundred bucks?
While reading the specs of these boats, I discovered accounts of the skirmishes the Korean Navy had with the Norks. See here and here for instance. I guess the language and the chest-thumping in these pages would greatly displease the US-flag burners, but it’s nice to see that some people – with guns – still have a huge chip on their shoulders re: NK…
I’m curious to know how big these vessels are, and how they are going to be shipped to a landlocked country. This was a fascinating post, Marmot!
These aren’t very big boats, about 108 ft in length, compared to say a WWII US PT boat of 78-80 ft. They weign in 150 tons, about 3x a PT, but the PTs were wooden and the PKMs are steel. The only really significant spatial difference is the PKM’s “flying bridge” type superstructure. All in all, not much more than a relatively small oceangoing fishing boat. Put it on a trailer; just make sure the tractor has got some guts.