Korea will build a 30,000-ton light aircraft carrier capable of housing more than a dozen F-35B vertical takeoff-and-landing stealth fighter jets.

A government source on Monday said Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Park Han-ki and the chiefs of the Army, Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps in a meeting on July 12 decided to push for the project.

The carrier will be the Navy's biggest ship, nearly 1.5 times as large as the Dokdo or Marado landing platform helicopter ships.

It will be designed to accommodate 16 F-35B VTOL stealth jets, 3,000 marines, and 20 armored landing craft.

It will be about 250 m long, a little longer than Japan's Izumo-class helicopter carriers. Japan plans to turn two Izumo-class helicopter carriers into light aircraft carriers capable of accommodating about a dozen F-35B stealth jets by 2023.