Navy hands its top shipboard command to a woman for the first time

A woman will command the Navy's largest ship for the first time when Capt. Bae Sun-young takes the helm of the 14,500-ton amphibious assault ship Dokdo on Wednesday, the Navy said Tuesday.

The Dokdo, which the Navy classifies as a large transport ship, is a captain-rank command, the most senior post a Korean naval officer can hold aboard a single vessel. Female officers have commanded smaller warships, but none had held a command at that level.

Bae entered the Korea Naval Academy in 1999, the first year the academy admitted women, and was commissioned in 2003 as a member of the academy's 57th graduating class. She has commanded the patrol boat Chamsuri-282 and the minelayer Wonsan, served as operations officer on the corvette Namwon and worked as a deck officer on the Dokdo itself. The Navy calls her an operations specialist who has moved across the fleet, from combat ships to support vessels.

"She has proven her ability to handle ships and to command operations through key posts," a Navy official said.

This year, she was head of the Maritime Operations Center at the Combined Force Maritime Component Command during the U.S.-led multinational Rim of the Pacific Exercise, also known as Rimpac. That put her in operational charge of multinational naval forces, among them carrier strike groups and expeditionary strike groups.

No woman had commanded the Dokdo since the ship entered service in 2007. It is 199 meters (653 feet) long and 30 meters wide. It carries helicopters, tanks and amphibious assault vehicles. The ship directs operations at sea, in the air and ashore, and it moves troops. Along with a crew of about 300, it can take on some 700 landing troops, as many as 12 UH-60 special operations helicopters, six tanks and Korean Amphibious Assault Vehicles, and eight 5-ton trucks.

The Navy's other Dokdo-class ship is the Marado. Vessels of the class serve as flagships for task groups and as mother ships for the Navy's drones.

Bae has framed the appointment as a question of responsibility rather than of precedent.

"A commander is not the person sitting in the safest spot on the bridge but the person standing farthest forward and taking responsibility, all the more so when the moment is dangerous," Bae said in a written interview.

"Personally, rather than being boxed in by the title of 'first woman,' I have served with the mindset of doing my best at whatever mission I am given, one day at a time."

About 2,800 women serve in the Navy as officers and noncommissioned officers. The service has widened their roles across every domain. Women now hold ship commands, fly maritime operations helicopters and maritime patrol aircraft, crew submarines and work in the Sea Salvage and Rescue Unit, known as the SSU. 

"The Dokdo is not simply one ship but a core asset that represents the standing of the Korean Navy," Bae said. "[Commanding it] is like a scaled-down joint operation, in which helicopters, landing craft and service members from several units all have to move as one. I will focus on checking our training system so that each department can respond immediately and precisely in an emergency, like a single living organism."

Large transport ships are also used for disaster relief and for operations to evacuate Korean nationals from abroad.

"With a resolve that allows not the slightest gap, we will protect the lives and safety of the people in peacetime and, in a contingency, be a sharp spear that strikes at the enemy's blind spot and a sturdy shield," Bae said.

BY LEE YU-JUNG [cho.yongjun1@joongang.co.kr]