Many military, police communication radios found dysfunctional

Many radios for operational communication that the military and police use in the event of national crisis are dysfunctional. Many of them are aged and were used in the Vietnam War, while the introduction of new radios has been delayed.

According to a report that Rep. Kim Ki-seon of the ruling Saenuri Party, who serves on the parliamentary committee on administration and public security, received from the National Police Agency on Monday, the number of radios held by police was 475, 43 less than the required 518. Among them, 335 or 70.5 percent were found to have exceeded their lifespan of nine years.

Older model radios used in the Vietnam War (1960-1975) numbered 207 or 43.6 percent of the units available. These devices had their lifespans exceeded three-fold and are called PRC-77, also known as “backpack radios.” They were used at the company level in the Army. Weighing 6 kilograms and offering communication range of just 8 kilometers, the device lags far behind in performance to a newer model that weighs just 4 kilograms and has a communication range of 20 kilometers.

Since they are old models, many of them are out of order. A cross-the-board inspection of radios for communications in military and police operations conducted last year by the Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency found that 19 of 99 radios in its possession were not working.

Among them, 18 were the aged PRC-77 model, which is mostly used by troops that guard major national facilities, including the National Assembly and the Central Government Complex.

Rep. Kim said, “Communications facilities are so important that they are the primary target in the event of war. But since many of radio devices are aged, authorities cannot even fix them due to lack of parts and components when they go out of order.”

By region, the Seoul police agency was short 27 units of its required volume, while Jeju Island`s lacked 11 units. This means that Seoul, which is packed with major government organizations including the presidential office, and Jeju, where police conduct operations on behalf of the military, have communication facilities that are problematic.

Police are not actively pursuing the introduction of new radio models, however. The number of new radios has continued to decline every year from 28 in 2007 to 15 in 2009 and five last year.

A National Police Agency source said, “Since there is little use for them other than testing devices in the Ulchi Freedom Guardian military exercise (with the U.S.), the radios` introduction lags behind other priorities when allocating budget.”

neo@donga.com