Seoul (VNA) – Senior defence officials of the Republic of Korea (RoK)and Indonesia held an annual consultation session via video conference onNovember 24, reaffirming their commitment for cooperation in the field ofdefence industry.
It was attended by Major General Sung Il, an international cooperation officerat the RoK Defence Ministry, Major General Dadang Hendrayudha of Indonesia’sDefence Ministry, and representatives of eight companies from the two nations.
During the session, the two sides agreed to beef up cooperation toprotect defense technologies and discussed other pending issues, according tothe Defense Acquisition Programme Administration.
It was a meaningful meeting that could help resolve pendingdefense industry issues between the two countries and will greatly contributeto strengthening their cooperation down the road, Sung said.
The talks took place as Indonesia is hundreds of millions ofdollars in arrears on its dues for the RoK's next-generation fighter jetdevelopment project in which it has agreed to fund some of the developmentcosts as a partner nation.
Indonesia joined the KF-X project, agreeing to shoulder 20 percentof the development cost of the 8.8 trillion KRW (7.3 billion USD) project, orabout 1.7 trillion KRW, in an effort to procure aircraft for its air force andto advance the aerospace industry. But the Southeast Asian country failed topay around 500 billion KRW it was supposed to pay by the end of August./.