Trump Is Tired of Arming Allies. This Country Is Stepping Up.

“Warsaw’s turn towards South Korean defense procurement stems partly from a profound disappointment with Germany’s initial response to the war in Ukraine — a feeling echoed across NATO’s eastern flank,” says Oskar Pietrewicz, a senior analyst at the Polish Institute of International Affairs. “Berlin’s hesitation to send military aid and its slow delivery of replacement Leopard tanks to allies who had donated Soviet-era armor created a significant trust gap, and South Korea successfully filled this void.”South Korea’s weaponry stood out to Warsaw for a few key reasons, the most important being fast delivery. Perhaps an emphasis on speed is inevitable for a society built on the culture of bbali-bbali, the famous Korean phrase that means “hurry, hurry.”But the emphasis on efficiency was also backed up by a defense industry that was already operating at high capacity due to the constant threat from North Korea; while the peninsula may be free of conflict for now, a peace treaty was never signed between the two countries, and they are still technically at war. As a result, major South Korean defense companies have maintained active production lines — a readiness that has proved valuable amid today’s geopolitical crises.“We were preparing for North Korea, but we are now prepared and we are willing to offer these solutions to our customers around the world,” says Ju Hyung Kim, president at the Security Management Institute, a defense think tank affiliated with the South Korean National Assembly.The preparation for potential battle with North Korea has also helped lower costs, since weapons are manufactured on a large scale to meet domestic demand alongside that of foreign buyers. A combination of a domestic supply chain, lower labor and production costs, and state backing helps keep prices low. It’s a particularly attractive advantage for cash-strapped governments that are looking to modernize their militaries at speed and scale.Another enticing feature of South Korea’s defense industry? Its willingness to offer technology transfer and local production — two perks that are much harder to come by with traditional Western defense exporters.The drawbacks for South Korea are obvious: It could reduce long-term dependence on the original supplier and ultimately create future competition. As a matter of fact, South Korea’s booming defense industry is a product of such technology transfer. Licensing production of foreign weapons, many from the U.S., was a key component of South Korea’s arms industry starting in the 1970s.

But South Korean defense firms remain willing to build local production hubs and share their technology with other countries in order to stand out in the market. It’s a particularly attractive offer to middle powers trying to become more self-sustainable as longtime geopolitical alliances erode, and a key reason why Poland decided to sign a deal with Seoul.“That’s the Polish experience — that despite our agreements with the U.S., with Germany, with other European countries in recent 30 years… we’ve got nothing in terms of defense industry cooperation. In fact, our defense industry was not strengthened,” Pietrewicz says. For Warsaw, the hope is that technology transfers and local production from South Korean defense companies will revitalize domestic defense sectors, generate employment and set up regional maintenance hubs.South Korean companies have also won fans by their willingness to customize their products based on their clients’ needs. Take the unusual request Egypt made to South Korea’s Hanwha Aerospace: Could a howitzer designed to bombard targets on land be modified to strike moving warships at sea?It was an unorthodox way of using artillery — such modifications had never been made for South Korean K9 self-propelled howitzers. It would, however, save Egypt a lot of money by eliminating the need to stock reserves of dedicated anti-ship missiles.Rows of mock 30mm shells are seen at Hanwha Aerospace factory in Changwon, South Korea, on Nov. 21, 2024. | Jung Yeon-Je/AFP via Getty ImagesAnd so Hanwha said yes. The modified system succeeded in testing, giving Egypt a new coastal-defense option and Seoul another powerful selling point. Egypt purchased hundreds of the weapons in a $1.7 billion deal in 2022.One often overlooked perk of buying from a South Korean defense company is its lack of political baggage — something that several top weapons exporters seem to have these days. Many Europeans aren’t fans of the Trump administration; buying from adversaries like China and Russia is unthinkable; Israel’s reputation has been tarnished by its war in Gaza.“No one is going to question, ‘Why do you buy weapons from Korea?’” says Ramón Pacheco Pardo, who is an international relations professor at King’s College London and has written several books on the peninsula.

South Korea’s reliability also makes it a political winner — especially when compared to the U.S., which is struggling to keep up with demand and delaying shipments.“These things are very expensive,” says Cara Abercrombie, an assistant secretary of defense for acquisition under the Biden administration. “You’ve got parliaments that have approved spending, and from a domestic political standpoint, you’ve just appropriated billions of dollars for something you won’t see for several years. That becomes politically hard to defend.”All these factors — the speed, affordability, generous technology transfers, customization and politics — have helped South Korea establish itself in a market that has traditionally been hard to break into.The question for South Korea now is where to go from here.The country is ambitious: It wants to be the fourth-largest arms exporter in the world by 2030. That is a steep hill to climb, but South Korean weapons have recently gotten some good PR via the war in Iran. Cheongung-II, an air defense system made by LIG Nex1 that had never been tested in combat until this war, reportedly hit 29 out of 30 missiles or drones it targeted in the United Arab Emirates — a signal to the world that South Korean weapons are affordable and effective at the same time.The challenges, however, are also clear, the biggest one being that they are still overshadowed by their well-established competitors. While South Korean tanks and air defense systems have gotten rave reviews, aircrafts and large naval vessels — which are a major money maker — have yet to capture the attention of the world.South Koreans are hoping to change that with a $60 billion submarine deal Hanwha Ocean is trying to sign with Canada; it would be the largest military procurement deal in Ottawa’s history. But the peninsula faces a formidable opponent in Germany’s ThyssenKrupp Marine Systems, which has a long track record of producing submarines for NATO countries. Canada is expected to announce the winning company later in June — which means the South Korean government and Hanwha still have a little time to lobby Ottawa — but the odds look increasingly slim, according to Kim, the president of SMI.“Compared to the European suppliers that had hundreds of years of experience and reputation, we’re not so accepted as a trustworthy player, so it’s going to be a real hurdle for us,” says Kim.