ROKS Andong will be the second ship that the Philippines Navy possesses after the first acquisition of another retired Pohang-class corvette, ROKS Chungju, which was renamed as BRP Conrado Yap by Filipinos.
After two years of operation at sea, the Philippines Navy evaluated that the Korean patrol corvette is apt to be able to defend 7,107 islands and has the best conditions for coastal patrol and defense.
The ROK Navy has transferred 40 ships to 10 friendly countries so far. These have been used as a means of facilitating defense cooperation and exports abroad with countries that received Korean vessels.
ROKS Andong was built by Hanjin Heavy industries on April 30th in 1987 and delivered to the Korean Navy in 1989. Then, it officially retired on December 31st in 2020, after service of 31 years in the 1st Fleet. 24 Pohang-class patrol combat corvettes were built from the mid-1980s to the early 1990s, and the ROK Navy currently has 10 of them.
It was designed to patrol coastal areas, equipped with 76mm and 40m guns, Mistral, Harpoon, light-weight torpedoes, and antisubmarine bombs. Its full displacement is 1200 tons, with 100 crews, the length of 88.3 meters, width of 10 meters, maximum speed of 32 knots.
ROKS Andong proved its operational performance by being chosen as the best gunnery ship in 2016, 2018, and even in 2020, the year of its decommissioning from the ROK Navy fleet.
About Pohang-class corvette
The Pohang is a class of Patrol Combat Corvette (PCC) of the Republic of Korea Navy (ROKN). A total of 24 ships were built by several South Korean shipyards: Korea Shipbuilding Corporation, Hyundai Heavy Industries, Daewoo Shipbuilding and Korea Takoma.
The primary mission of the corvette is coastal line patrolling. Pohang class is deployed as a main force to monitor defence in the South Korean coast. These ships were equipped to perform anti-submarine, anti-ship and anti-aircraft warfare operations in the littoral environment.
As the Pohang-class ships are progressively being phased out of the ROK Navy (being replaced by the new generation Incheon-class frigates, and then eventually by the FFX batch II and FFX batch III), several of the corvettes have been transferred to South Korea’s allies (namely Peru, Vietnam, the Philippines, Colombia and Egypt). The first-in-class ship is now a museum in Pohang city. The 14th ship of the class, ROKS Cheonan, was sunk on 26 March 2010 by a torpedo launched by a North Korean Yeono-class submarine, killing 46 sailors.
Pohang-class Main specifications:
- Length: 88m
- Beam: 10m
- Draft: 2.9m
- Displacement: 1220 loaded
- Propulsion: CODOG configuration (gas and diesel engines)
- Speed: 32 knots maximum; 15 knots cruising
- Range: 4000 miles
- Crew: 95
- Weapons: 2 x OTO Melara 76 mm/62 compact cannon; 2 x 2 Otobreda 40mm/70 cal; 2 x 2 RGM-84 Harpoon Block 1B; 3 x 2 Mark 32 Surface Vessel Torpedo Tubes
