South Korea Exports Arms, but Not to Ukraine
CHANGWON, South Korea — A year after Russia invaded Ukraine, the war has spurred a global effort to produce more missiles, tanks, artillery shells and other munitions. Few countries have moved as quickly as South Korea to increase output.
Last year, South Korea’s arms exports rose 140 percent to a record $17.3 billion, including deals worth $12.4 billion to sell tanks, howitzers, fighter jets and rocket launchers to Poland, one of Ukraine’s closest allies.
But South Korea has refused to send lethal assistance to Ukraine itself. Instead, it has focused on filling the world’s rearmament gap and has imposed strict export control rules on all its sales. Its wariness stems in part from its reluctance to antagonize Moscow, from which it hopes for cooperation in imposing new sanctions against an increasingly belligerent North Korea.
Yet few nations’ defense industries have boomed as a result of the invasion as much as South Korea’s. And despite appeals from Kyiv and NATO to send weapons to Ukraine, Seoul has continued to proceed cautiously, balancing its steadfast alliance with Washington and its own national and economic interests.
Unlike European nations that scaled down their militaries and arms production after the Cold War, South Korea has kept a robust domestic defense supply chain to meet demand from its own armed forces and to guard against North Korea.
Since the Russian invasion, arms suppliers like the United States have faced major production shortages for rocket launchers and other arms. Germany and other nations have also struggled to secure enough tanks to send to Ukraine.
As countries in Eastern Europe raced to re-equip and upgrade their militaries after sending their Soviet-era weapons to Ukraine, South Korea became an enticing option.
The orders from Poland were a boon to President Yoon Suk Yeol, who has vowed to make South Korea the fourth-largest weapons exporter by 2027, after the United States, Russia and France.
From 2017 to 2021, South Korea was the fastest-growing among the world’s top 25 arms exporters, ranking eighth with a 2.8 percent share of the global market, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. That was before it landed contracts with Poland, Egypt and the United Arab Emirates last year.
Seoul denounced the invasion of Ukraine, and Mr. Yoon has vowed to protect “freedom” and the “rules-based” international order. But South Korea’s eagerness to increase arms exports has highlighted its difficulties with that balancing act.
President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia has warned South Korea against aiding Ukraine militarily, saying that would ruin relations between Moscow and Seoul and could prompt Russia to deepen military ties with North Korea. The war has moved North Korea closer to Russia; it openly supported the invasion, and Washington has accused it of shipping munitions to Russia.
When Seoul agreed to sell artillery shells to help the United States replenish its stockpiles, it insisted on an export-control condition that the “end user” would be the United States, a rule that it has had in place for all its global arms deals — including its contracts with Poland — for decades.
Nonetheless, some South Korean weapons technology has made its way to Ukraine: The Polish Krab howitzers that were sent to Ukraine use the chassis from South Korean K9s. (South Korea’s Defense Acquisition Program Administration refused to comment on whether the transfer violated export controls.)
South Korea sweetens its arms export deals by offering to transfer technology and facilitate local production, enhancing the domestic defense industries of its buyers. For instance, most of the South Korean howitzers Poland is buying will be produced in Poland with local partners.
Hanwha Aerospace, South Korea’s largest defense contractor, is planning to triple its production capacity by next year to keep up with growing demand. The company’s K9s accounted for 55 percent of the world’s self-propelled howitzer export market from 2000 to 2021, according to South Korean analysts. Poland’s order
Rearming the West, while trying to placate Moscow.
will increase that economy of scale.
Hanwha has set its sights on the global market, with the full support of the South Korean government and military. Mr. Yoon met his Polish counterpart in June to help seal the weapons deals last year. In January, his office announced it had opened a new task force to promote arms exports.
“Geopolitics has made it our destiny to nurture a defense industry,” said Son Jae Il, president of Hanwha Aerospace.