The Navy's First Dispatched Ship is the 'Leaky Gearing-class Destroyer'

The Navy's leaking Gearing-class destroyer Gangwon. It was decommissioned in December 2000.

[Monthly Defense Times Editor-in-Chief An Seung-beom] At the beginning of the new year, a South Korean-flagged oil tanker was seized and detained near the Strait of Hormuz, prompting the rapid dispatch of the ROKS Choi Young.

The ROKS Choi Young is the 6th ship of the Chungmugong Yi Sun-sin-class destroyers, which serve as the backbone of the Navy's 7th Mobile Flotilla, and as of January 2021, it is deployed as part of the Cheonghae Unit.

In accordance with UN resolutions, since April 2009, the Cheonghae Unit has been dispatching one destroyer to the Somali waters to serve as an escort task force. This is the second naval deployment unit after the Navy Transport Support Group (Haeseong Unit), which served as part of the multinational forces supporting the U.S. Afghanistan War from December 2001 to September 2003 during overseas deployments following the Gulf War in 1991.

The Cheonghae Unit is most famous in the 28-year history of the Republic of Korea Armed Forces' peacekeeping activities for several real combat cases, including the successful rescue operation of the Samho Jewelry, which was hijacked by Somali pirates in January 2011, known as the "Operation Dawn of Aden."

During the Gulf War in 1991, the Ministry of National Defense Policy Planning Office, which first considered naval deployment, contemplated dispatching one of the seven U.S.-made Gearing-class destroyers (known as the Chungbuk-class in the ROK Navy, with over 45 years of service at the time) that were the main combatants. Additionally, it planned to dispatch a Namyang-class minesweeper, also U.S.-made and built during World War II, alongside.

However, it was determined that the 3,000-ton Gearing-class destroyers would face difficulties in maintenance and upkeep during long-distance operations spanning thousands of miles, and the wooden-hulled Namyang-class minesweepers would be incapable of even reaching the Middle East waters. Consequently, the Navy's Gulf War deployment was excluded from consideration, and instead, five C-130H transport aircraft introduced by the Air Force since 1988 were dispatched.

In 2016, the Joint Chiefs of Staff included the Gwanggaeto the Great-class destroyers and Incheon-class frigates in the deployment forces to prevent the loss of domestic power of the Chungmugong Yi Sun-sin-class destroyers, but due to issues such as onboard habitability, this has not yet been implemented.