South Korea has set its sights on becoming the world's fourth-largest maker of weapons by 2027. - AFP
SEOUL (The Straits Times/Asia News Network): In a gesture of goodwill years ago, when the Philippines was boosting its weak naval defence capabilities amid territorial disputes in the South China Sea, South Korea made the decision to donate a soon-to-retire corvette warship to the country.
The Chungju was decommissioned in 2016 at the age of 29 and transferred to the Philippine Navy in 2019 for a token fee of US$100 (S$136).
That marked the deepening of military cooperation that now sees the Philippines becoming one of the largest buyers of South Korean-made weapons, alongside other South-east Asian neighbours such as Indonesia and Thailand.
In July 2022, the world sat up and took notice when South Korea inked its largest-ever arms deal with Poland.
Seeking to replace weapons donated to Ukraine to fight against Russia’s invasion, Poland agreed to buy 980 tanks, 648 howitzers and 48 fighter jets in a deal estimated to be worth as much as 19 trillion won (S$19.6 billion). The South Korean government has quietly been boosting its defence technology sector and expanding arms sales overseas, most notably in Asia.
Its arms exports more than tripled from US$1.2 billion in the 2011 to 2015 period to US$3.8 billion from 2016 to 2020, data from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (Sipri) showed.
The figure rose to US$7 billion in 2021 and is expected to reach US$10 billion in 2022, according to the Export-Import Bank of Korea. The nation was the eighth-largest arms exporter in the world from 2017 to 2021, after the United States, Russia, France, China, Germany, Italy and Britain, according to a recent report by the Korea Research Institute for Defence Technology Planning and Advancement that cited Sipri data.
South Korea’s 2.8 per cent market share in 2021 was small compared with the US’ 39 per cent, but experts said the American ally benefited from initial technology transfers from the US and is now capable of producing state-of-the-art weapons that are cheaper than those of its rivals.
Experts credited the former Moon Jae-in administration (2017 to 2022) for putting South Korea’s defence market on the world map, with policies such as increasing defence spending and working with private companies to boost domestic supplies such that the excess could be sold overseas.
The most notable was the K9 Thunder howitzer produced by Hanwha Defence that in late 2021 made history by becoming the first-ever Asian-made howitzer model to enter the Australian market. In February 2022, Egypt bought US$1.7 billion worth of K9s.
In the five years to 2021, the biggest buyer of South Korean weapons was the Philippines, with a 16 per cent share, followed by Indonesia and the United Kingdom, each with a 14 per cent share.
The most-sold items were warships (68 per cent of total sales), artillery (19 per cent) and warplanes (12 per cent), Sipri said.
Abhijit Apsingikar, a senior analyst for aerospace, defence and security at London-based data analytics and consulting company GlobalData, noted that South Korea, wary of the pitfalls of over-relying on allies for its defence, shifted its emphasis from technology transfer to co-development of weapons in 2019. It developed its own systems that “have significant export potential in the international market”.
“The cornerstone of the South Korean defence export strategy has been its willingness to partner with local defence companies and accept local production of South Korean defence equipment in other countries, which has allowed it to not only foray into the Indian market but also the difficult Polish market,” he told The Straits Times.
Dr Lee Jae-hyon, a South-East Asia expert at The Asan Institute for Policy Studies in Seoul, noted that former president Moon, who stepped down in May 2022, promoted arms sales to South-east Asia as part of plans to deepen engagement with the regional bloc.
The South Korean navy ships donated to countries such as the Philippines and Vietnam were old but still more advanced than others in these countries’ fleets, and this opened up doors to future arms sales, Dr Lee noted.
South Korean weapons are also cheaper than those made in the US, and yet “interoperability with US systems is guaranteed”, he added.
“Many South-east Asian countries want to cooperate with the US when it comes to defence and security, so interoperability could be a problem if they use European, Chinese or Russian weapons. But if they buy from South Korea, interoperability with US systems is guaranteed and it’s cheaper, so that would be attractive for South-east Asian countries.”
President Yoon Suk-yeol, who took office in May, is now eyeing an even bigger share of the global defence export market. His government announced plans last month to push the country’s world ranking to No. 4 in 2027.
Dr Lyle Goldstein, director of the Asia Engagement programme at the Washington-based think-tank Defence Priorities, said it is “understandable that South Korea wants to capitalise on this new market niche” and is technologically capable of doing so. But he warned that a massive expansion is “not conducive to South Korea’s peace policy”.
South Korean activists have already protested against the growing arms sales, saying they run against the national policy to build peace on the Korean peninsula.
There is also a major concern about a potential arms race in the region, Dr Goldstein said. “No doubt China, as a major power broker in the South-East Asia region, could be increasingly perturbed about South Korea’s role in arming regional states.”
GlobalData’s associate analyst for aerospace, defence and security Rouble Sharma, however, ruled out the arms race concern, noting that South-east Asian nations are in fact working together on defence issues.
“Any arms race, at this point, would be to gain access to technologies that could bring some parity in capabilities to protect their territorial integrity and rights over their exclusive economic zones from larger powers like China, and not against each other,” she said.
