Commander’s homecoming on the seas
Apr 04,2009
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| Jeffrey J. Kim was inaugurated on March 28 as commander of the U.S.S. John S. McCain.[YONHAP] |
Amid the heightened tensions on the Korean Peninsula recently, one bright story to surface on the seas was the homecoming of a U.S. naval officer who returned to his motherland to patrol the waters off Korea in preparation for North Korea’s suspected missile launch.
Headquartered at Yokosuka Naval Base in Yokosuka, Japan, the U.S. Navy’s Seventh Fleet appointed Commander Jeffrey J. Kim to captain the U.S.S. John S. McCain, a 154-meter (505-foot) destroyer equipped with Aegis missile-tracking technology.
The Korean-American commander was inaugurated on March 28 at Korea’s Naval Operations Command in Busan to take control of the American Aegis destroyer that was deployed to the East Sea on March 30, after participating in the annual Korea-U.S. military drill code-named Key Resolve.
Kim is the second Korean-American naval officer to lead a high-tech Aegis vessel, after Commander Choi Hee-dong, who leads the U.S.S. Chafee.
According to his wish, the U.S. Navy permitted Kim to have the inauguration ceremony in the country of his birth.
Kim was born in Seoul and moved to the U.S. with his family when he was 9 years old. He grew up in Albany, California, before heading to Cambridge, Massachusetts, where he studied aeronautics and astronautics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
He also completed training for the Reserve Officers’ Training Corps while in college and was commissioned as an ensign of the U.S. Navy in 1991.
Kim went on to earn a master’s degree in public policy at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government, and served on the aircraft carrier U.S.S. Independence and the frigate U.S.S. McClusky before taking command of the John S. McCain.
In anticipation of the suspected April 4-8 North Korean missile launch, Kim and the U.S.S. John S. McCain are joined by the Aegis-guided U.S.S. Chafee and Korea’s first Aegis-class destroyer, King Sejong the Great.
The 9,200 ton McCain has a crew of 210 and is equipped with 90 vertical missile launch pads. It has four radars capable of detecting all flying objects within a 1,000-kilometer range.
Commissioned in 1994, it is named after the father and grandfather of 2008 U.S. presidential candidate, Senator John McCain III, who were both admirals.
Korea’s Chief of Naval Operations Admiral Jung Ok-keun congratulated Kim saying, “We’re proud to have a Korean-American commander to lead an Aegis cruiser in Korea. That the ceremony took place in Korea represents a robust Korea-U.S. alliance.”
By Lee Young-jong [smartpower@joongang.co.kr]