PORT HUENEME, Calif. -- Lt. j.g Jeong Soo Kim, with Naval Mobile Construction Battalion (NMCB) 5, received first place in the Proceedings’ 2021 Marine Corps essay contest for his paper titled “Design the Littoral Combat Team Around Its Core Mission” in the November edition.
Retired Vice Adm. Peter Daly, the chief executive officer of the United States Naval Institute, presented Kim the award Feb. 16, 2022, in San Diego.
Kim spoke about what drove him to write this particular paper.
“I worked on Marine Corps Air Station Iwakuni during deployment,” said Kim. “During that time, I had a lot of lively discussions with colleagues and was inspired to write this article to summarize our hopes for how the Marine Corps can change.”
Kim was deployed with NMCB-5 to Iwakuni, Japan, during the battalion’s 2021-2022 deployment to the Indo-Pacific region. He is a Columbia University graduate with a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering and a Civil Engineer Corps officer in the U.S. Navy.
The U.S. Navy Seabees with NMCB-5 are homeported out of Port Hueneme. They train on high-quality construction, expeditionary logistics, and combat operations to execute construction and engineering projects for major combat operations, disaster response, and humanitarian assistance.