President Yoon wants South Korea to become one of world’s top weapons suppliers
“By entering the world’s top four defense exporters after the United States, Russia and France, the (South Korean) defense industry will become a strategic industrialization and a defense powerhouse,” Yoon said at the presidential office.In 2021, South Korea ranked 10th in the world in arms transfers, according to the authoritative Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI). With arms exports valued at $566 million, according to SIPRI’s unique trend-indicator value monitoring system, Seoul was well behind last year’s No. 4 exporter, Italy, which sold arms worth $1.7 billion. For comparison, US arms transfers were calculated to be $10.6 billion.South Korea has already taken steps to achieve its top four ambitions. Late last month, it signed its biggest-ever arms deal to supply Poland with almost 1,000 K2 tanks, more than 600 pieces of artillery and dozens of fighter jets.”Cast in a strategic light, Seoul’s growing ability and willingness to supply advanced capabilities to other US allies should be welcomed, particularly as the Biden administration grapples with the parallel challenges of resourcing military strategies in Europe and the Indo-Pacific while shoring up America’s own defense industrial capacity,” Lee and Corben wrote. Questions have been raised about how close Seoul and Washington really are on key challenges.For instance, after US-China tensions spiked over the visit of US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to Taiwan earlier this month, when Pelosi visited South Korea afterward, Yoon did not meet in person with her, opting instead for a phone call. That led to speculation South Korea was trying not to upset China.”Even if questions remain over the true extent of South Korea’s strategic alignment with the United States, Seoul is nevertheless generating strategic effects by arming states facing Chinese and Russian coercion,” Lee and Corbin wrote.Chun said the recently announced sale of tanks to Poland could bring benefits for the South Korean military, too.The K2 tanks in South Korea’s inventory are not as capable as those the Poles will be getting because significant improvements — including better defenses — have been made since the K2s were introduced in 2014, he said.”I hope this is going to be a catalyst for Koreans. We have 2,000 tanks, but if you have legacy tanks, they’re not worth a thing. We saw this in Ukraine. We need state of the art tanks to overcome state-of-the-art antitank missiles. I’m hoping that this would be a catalyst for that,” Chun said.