Menghean Maritime Security Force
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The Maritime Security Force (Menghean: 해양 보안 부대/海洋保安部隊, Haeyang Boan Budae) is the coast guard of Menghe. It has undergone multiple reorganizations, reclassifications, and name changes over the years, and was formerly known as the Maritime Patrol Force, the Maritime Border Security Force, and, informally but not in official translations, the Menghean Coast Guard. Since 2017, it has been organized as an agency-level body subordinate to the Ministry of Internal Security, and thus it is formally known as the Maritime Security Force of the Ministry of Internal Security of the Socialist Republic of Menghe (Dae Meng Sahoejuyi Gonghwaguk Guknae Boanbu Haeyang Boan Budae).
Though no longer directly subordinate to the Menghean Navy, as it was between 2011 and 2017, the Maritime Security Force is a paramilitary organization and many of its ships are armed and built to military standards. In wartime, the Menghean government can transfer control of its assets to the Menghean Navy, which would use them as auxiliary escorts and patrol vessels.
History
In 1964, after its victory in the Menghean War of Liberation, the Democratic People's Republic of Menghe established the Maritime Border Police Force (해양 국경 경찰 부대/海洋國境警察部隊, Haeyang Gukgyŏng Gyŏngchal Budae). This agency, part of the Ministry of State Security, was tasked with patrolling the country's maritime borders and later its exclusive economic zone. While it formally performed most routine duties associated with a coast guard, it was primarily tasked with preventing defectors from escaping from the DPRM to Altagracia, Dayashina, or Hanhae by boat, raft, or, in the case of Altagracia, by swimming. The Maritime Border Police Force also served as a civilian counterweight to the Menghean People's Navy, which, under the terms of the Sangwŏn Agreement, was insulated from the oversight of the Menghean People's Communist Party. The Maritime Border Police Squadron in Donggyŏng included gunboats and torpedo boats which could, in theory, attack a Menghean People's Navy formation entering the Kimhae Sea en route to the capital.
After the Decembrist Revolution, the Ministry of State Security was merged into the Ministry of the Interior and its personnel were purged. To further dismantle the power of the outgoing regime, the interim government transferred the Maritime Border Police Force to the control of the Menghean Navy, which, as a military body, had been insulated from Communist ideological control and was relatively loyal to Choe Sŭng-min's new regime. There, it was renamed the Maritime Border Security Force (Haeyang Gukgyŏng Boan Budae).
In 1995, content that the civilian bureaucracy was loyal to his new regime, Choe Sŭng-min transferred the Maritime Border Security Force back to the control of the Ministry of Internal Security, where it retained its previous name.
The agency was returned to Navy control in 2011, as one of the aftereffects of the 2005 Menghean military reforms. This reorganization was meant to streamline the wartime integration of the paramilitary auxiliary and the active Navy. During this time, it was renamed the Maritime Patrol Force (해양 순찰대 / 海洋巡察隊Haeyang Sunchaldae).
The latest reorganization came in 2017, after the resolution of the Innominadan Crisis. The Maritime Patrol Force was renamed the Maritime Security Force and placed under the controlf of the Ministry of Internal Security. It was also expanded through the merging-in of the Maritime Traffic Control Agency, formerly part of the Ministry of Transportation and Communications, and the Maritime Monitoring Service, formerly part of the Ministry of Maritime Affairs and Fisheries. For the first time, this produced a consolidated agency with the combined missions and resources of a proper coast guard.