Senior defence officials of the Republic of Korea (RoK) and Indonesia held an annual consultation session via video conference on 24 November, reaffirming their commitment for cooperation in the field of defence industry.

The Defense Acquisition Programme Administration (Photo: Yonhap News)

It was attended by Major General Sung Il, an international cooperation officer at the RoK Defence Ministry, Major General Dadang Hendrayudha of Indonesia’s Defence Ministry, and representatives of eight companies from the two nations.

During the session, the two sides agreed to beef up cooperation to protect defense technologies and discussed other pending issues, according to the Defense Acquisition Programme Administration.

It was a meaningful meeting that could help resolve pending defense industry issues between the two countries and will greatly contribute to strengthening their cooperation down the road, Sung said.

The talks took place as Indonesia is hundreds of millions of dollars in arrears on its dues for the RoK's next-generation fighter jet development project in which it has agreed to fund some of the development costs as a partner nation.

Indonesia joined the KF-X project, agreeing to shoulder 20 percent of the development cost of the 8.8 trillion KRW (7.3 billion USD) project, or about 1.7 trillion KRW, in an effort to procure aircraft for its air force and to advance the aerospace industry. But the Southeast Asian country failed to pay around 500 billion KRW it was supposed to pay by the end of August.

Source: VNA