S. Korea, Indonesia reaffirm cooperation for joint fighter jet project
Seok Jong-gun, minister of the Defense Acquisition Program Administration, and Donny Ermawan Taufanto, Indonesia's deputy minister of defense, discussed the joint development project, as well as other arms cooperation agenda items, during their meeting in Jakarta on Friday, DAPA said.
South Korea's defense authorities approved a plan last year to reduce Indonesia's contribution to the project to build the advanced supersonic fighter by 2026 to 600 billion won ($409 million) from the original amount of 1.6 trillion won, following Jakarta's repeated payment delays.
Indonesia initially agreed to pay about 20 percent of the 8.1 trillion-won program launched in 2015 in return for technology transfers and one prototype model, among other conditions.
The project had also been hampered by technology leak allegations involving a team of Indonesian engineers dispatched to South Korea.
"As the first high-level meeting that took place after the probe into Indonesian engineers, the talks served as an occasion for normalizing bilateral arms cooperation that had slightly been strained," Seok said, vowing to use it as "momentum" to expand cooperation with the Southeast Asian nation.
Taufanto was quoted as highlighting the competitiveness of South Korean arms equipment, such as the KT-1 and T-50 aircraft, and stressed the country is "faithfully" carrying out contracts and maintaining cooperative ties in various areas, according to DAPA. (Yonhap)
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