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The rise of South Korea’s weapons business
- bell-cot 5mo agoMaybe HN should ban words matching "surpris" from Titles? Even if you are clueless about the international arms trade - South Korea has maintained a huge military for the past 70-ish years, as part of their endless cold war with North Korea. And South Korea has been really big on manufacturing and exporting all sorts of stuff for the past half-ish-century. Why the hell wouldn't they be selling the military things that they are building anyway, at scale, to any and every non-enemy with money to spend?
- dredmorbius 5mo agoEmail suggestions (specific submission title edits, general edit-rewriting rules) to the mods: hn@ycombinator.com. HN guidelines typically prefer sourcing a title from the text of the document itself. Given Politico seem to be rotating through clickbait variants (the presently displayed title is "Trump Is Tired of Arming Allies. This Country Is Stepping Up.", the submitted title appears elsewhere in the page source), I'd suggest: "The rise of South Korea’s weapons business" Which is non-clickbaity, succinct, clear, and accurate. It appears at the start of the 4th body 'graph. I'd argue it's superior to the subtitle "The U.S. retreat from the global stage is an opportunity for South Korea.", as that option fails to indicate the nature of that opportunity. South Korea and arms trade are the key elements discussed.
- dang 5mo agoOk, we've put that in the title above. Thanks!
- tartoran 5mo agoI don’t know what your point really is. Yes Korea has been already selling arms, but as of recently, they stepped up drastically. This is what this article is about. Is the title wrong? That’s an issue with most titles these days
- dredmorbius 5mo agoThe original title, before dang corrected it (See: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48611464 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48611464>), was "The Surprising New Arms Dealer to the World". Which teases unnecessarily and uses several words to not reveal the actual country involved. HN mods chose to employ my suggested title, which follows from HN guidelines and practices: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32949870 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32949870> and <https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html>, most of the first six 'graphs following "In Submissions" pertaining to titles.
- Lucasoato 5mo agoThis was a good suggestion, removing clickbait titles that hide information to readers should be a standard in online news as well. Sadly, they don’t have their dang there yet.
- nine_k 5mo agoThere are, sadly, many places of conflicts smoldering for years; not all of them, if any, ended up in production of exportable weapons. E.g. Taiwan is preparing for a PRC invasion for decades; did it produce exportable weapons systems? So there is an element of surprise. Maybe not as large as North Korea exporting ballistic missiles to Russia [1], but still. [1]: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/apr/25/how-north-korea-arms-russia-in-ukraine-war https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/apr/25/how-north-kore...
- XorNot 5mo agoThe problem is there's a lot of analysis which does try to apply a generalist template to different parts of the world and it invariably leads to bad conclusions if you don't consider the local differences properly. Taiwan for example unlike SK has the problem that the entire island is within range of China, so unlike the SK situation where Seoul would have problems but you're still looking at having some meaningful rear areas out of range, Taiwan doesn't have that - the entire strategy ultimately depends on being a tough enough nut to crack for a few weeks that allies can jump in or China gets cold feet about it. In a protracted conflict there's nowhere you'd be able to build up local replacements - Ukraine is gigantic by comparison. You see this same planning on many of the Baltics who aren't Poland: the plan isn't to win, it's to hold on long enough that NATO can't credibly decide it's already over and stay out.
- Animats 5mo agoOther countries with rising weapons businesses are Ukraine and Iran. The best endorsement for a weapons manufacturer is winning a war against a tough opponent.
- jonnybgood 5mo agoIt’s just Russia using Iranian drones, but that was already happening. This war with Iran is not really an endorsement of Iranian weapons. The US didn’t stop its offensive because of Iranian weapons. We already knew the effectiveness of one way attack drones just from looking at their employment in Ukraine. The US counter-UAV industry might start seeing some exponential growth. There’s a lot of lessons learned for the US and we’ll probably start seeing a lot more money thrown around by the US military.
- Animats 5mo agoThe Ukrainian counter-UAV industry is already seeing huge growth. The Gulf oil states attacked by Iran are buying.[1] Strong counter-UAV defense requires an entire integrated low-altitude air defense systems. The US systems the Gulf states have purchased are high-altitude oriented, useful against incoming aircraft and some missiles. They have long range radars, but not enough of them in the right places for finding low-flying drones. They have expensive missiles like the Patriot, which works against drones if there are not many of them. There are many incoming drones. Ukraine alone is up to 7 million drones a year. Aerial warfare is changing in a big way. It's starting to look as big as the transition from battleships. Big airfields are big, fat targets. [1] https://www.thedefensenews.com/UAE-Qatar-and-Kuwait-Seek-Thousands-of-Ukrainian-Interceptor-Drones-from-TAF-Industries/ https://www.thedefensenews.com/UAE-Qatar-and-Kuwait-Seek-Tho...
- laughing_man 5mo agoVolume is the real threat from drones. Any competent air defense system can shoot down a drone, which is much, much easier to shoot down than a conventional cruise missile, which is in turn much easier to shoot down than a ballistic missile. But you can't task interceptors that cost $200k to shoot down drones that cost $20k for very long. Even if they all hit, and they won't, you'll quickly exhaust your magazines. In Ukraine both sides are choosing very carefully when and where to expend expensive interceptors, and I think as time goes by we're going to see a lot more passive defenses, i.e. sandbags and bunkers.
- kwillets 5mo agoThis trend has been obvious since at least the Poland deal. Korea gets much more return on its defense dollar manufacturing exportable weapons systems than relying on imports or domestic-only programs.
- tristanj 5mo agoThis article uses so many words to focus on the political reasons, but completely ignores the primary driver: Cost. Korean weapons systems are 40-60% cheaper than their American counterparts. The Korean K9 Thunder 155mm self-propelled howitzer costs $3.5 to $4 million per unit. For comparison, the American M109A7 Paladin costs around $8 million. The German PzH 2000 runs approximately $7 to $8 million. The K239 Chunmoo Rocket Artillery (MLRS) system runs $2.0M/unit; M142 HIMARS runs $4.5M/unit. 155mm artillery shells are $2k/shell from Korea vs $3.5k/shell from the United States. Korean Cheongung II SAM interceptors cost ~$1.1M/unit, US Patriot missiles cost $4.0M/unit. Buying South Korean weapons systems means you can procure twice as much at the same cost. It's a no brainer why Korea is winning military contracts. [0] https://militarymachine.com/k9-thunder-howitzer-most-exported https://militarymachine.com/k9-thunder-howitzer-most-exporte...
- alephnerd 5mo agoThey also tend to license IP or subsystems to and from the US as well, similar to Israeli firms like Elbit so there is an incentive for the US to continue supporting Korean sales as they have a downstream positive impact on American suppliers (eg. Borame and GE Aviation as well as Lockheed Martin).
- ReptileMan 5mo agoThe majority of military hardware costs are bribes, kickbacks and margins. Nobody thinks that they will fight a real war in which they will need a lot of hardware. If the US or Germany get in situation they need thousands of those - I guess their cost will fall to under 1M.
- mohamedkoubaa 5mo agoIf the US is ever in that situation again we won't be measuring cost of any manufacturable thing in dollars
- trillic 5mo agoCorrect it’ll be in Yen
- zuzululu 5mo agoSouth Korea's self-reliance on weapons came straight out of vietnam war, where they were initially sending soldiers with WW2 weapons and became frustrated with the fragile American rifle that were provided, President Park directly launched Korea's own DOD (Agency for Defense Development aka ADD) which has been successful at repurposing soviet and american designs at a time where both countries were unsupportive. The K2 rifle in particular follows the same philosophy of essentially taking the grunty but reliable/rugged simplicity and then adding very economical/cost effective capacity advancements. The collapse of soviet union directly contributed to South Korea's rocket program and ballistic missile design advancement which at the time was embarassing and behind north korea ( The original hyunmoo was a repurposed american nike missile meant for air defence) You will notice the cold start process of Hyunmoo series and Russian designs are identical. Instead of repaying debt Russia sent tanks T80Us for example in return for Korean cup ramen. Lots of learning going on and South Korea ha been exceptional in particular Germany's submarine program and their unwillingness to distribute/share tech lead to Koreans adapting and successfully competing for Canada's submarine program. Of late the Iran war showed that South Korea's anti-air as well as Biho class armor vehicles engaged drones well in UAE leading them to "we'll send you all we have now and you can pay us later" have won major trust from the region Unlike China and Russias own weaponry which have largely been proven as duds, Korean weapons are giving American manufacturers a run for their money and if Korea can pull off the middle east region, it would not only secure oil directly while bypassing US dollar settlement, it could establish a sort of oil-for-korean-weapons and perhaps even soldiers in the near future, I think that this is the particular threat that America sees from its own ally and there will likely be some efforts to curb or limit South Korea as this article I think is starting to set the tone for.
- alephnerd 5mo ago> I think that this is the particular threat that America sees from its own ally and there will likely be some efforts to curb or limit South Korea I disagree with that. The Korean defense manufacturers like Hanwha work hard to also build production capacity within the US and share or license IP from American firms (eg. Boramae and GE Aviation plus Lockheed Martin). SK's industry will continue to coexist and thrive with a US partnership similar to how the Israeli defense industry built linkages with the American ecosystem (eg. Elbit). It also helps that Korean defense companies being part of larger chaebols like Hanwha are able to link defense production contracts with other industrial deals (eg. battery and renewable tech in Hanwha's case).
- Tsiklon 5mo agoPoland I imagine is a tremendous exponent of South Korea’s arms industry. I always thought of arms procurement as a tedious and slow process but the Polish/Korean agreements have turned that on its head in my eyes. Simultaneously supplying new tanks, artillery, and munitions, while quickly standing up local factories to build them in Poland too is impressive, undoubtedly giving the Polish government some well needed breathing room. Given that the technical package is included here, there must be some form of non-competition clause
- yongjik 5mo agoDue to the geopolitical situation, South Korean military has invested a crazy amount of resources on firepower. It has 2,780 self-propelled artillery vehicles, which is number #3 in the world (after Russia and China). The US (#4) has 1,521. For a random comparison, Poland has 593 and Germany has 134. (source: https://www.globalfirepower.com/armor-self-propelled-guns-total.php https://www.globalfirepower.com/armor-self-propelled-guns-to... ) ...that is, (depending on what you want) South Korea has proven experience in building a ton of military equipment on time. Also, due to the dreadful climate of Korean peninsula, if something works in Korea, it will work pretty much everywhere except for desert (and maybe the arctic).
- paradoxyl 5mo agoGross incompetent Western elites, shoved full of garbage ideology, go and outsource all manufacturing and are astounded, astounded! that countries and peoples that dare to resist their tyranny can build cheaper than their corrupt, criminal networks of nepotism.
- abixb 5mo agoThe Australian Military Aviation History channel on YouTube has a series of two fantastic videos on South Korea's KF-21 "Borame" program, and it also touches quite a bit on South Korean defense industrial base as a whole. [0][1] As a military aviation enthusiast , I couldn't be happier that there seems to be a lot more diversity in military hardware developments, especially in close to state-of-the-art fighter jets, such as China's J-20/J-35, Turkey's KAAN, the GCAP/FCAS program, etc, with Dassault working on critical upgrades to current Rafales as well. Global South countries have a lot more options for close to cutting edge military hardware than they had even a decade or two ago to close the gap with the West. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8wFL0eRJVGQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8wFL0eRJVGQ [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X6X5zuthz-s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X6X5zuthz-s
- beloch 5mo ago"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." -------------- What's interesting about the German/Korean bids to build subs for Canada is that both countries are offering package deals that include building other military vehicles and parts in Canada. This isn't just going to be a one-time purchase of military goods. The deal, whichever country gets it, will, ideally, kick-start long-term cooperation. The Canadian government seems to want what they used to have with the U.S., only with more reliable partners that won't regularly threaten their sovereignty. This isn't so much a rise of SK's weapons business as it is the rise of a new, integrated military supply chain centred around NATO and close allies, but with a deliberate move away from U.S. suppliers.
- zuzululu 5mo agoThe Dutch/German submarine isn't even in production and unproven. Meanwhile the KSS are in service and production is guaranteed. I think the risk profiles are completely different between these two and that more or less seems to be the edge that Korea uses as leverage ex) Poland
- Danox 5mo agoSounds good, but they won’t be able to sell them to anyone without the United States giving permission and butting in at every potential sale.
- sofixa 5mo agoThat's not true, they even sell in direct competition with the US (MLRS systems or tanks to Poland)
- jessinra98 5mo agoThe speed at which Korea has supplied tanks, artillery, munitions, and even set up local production faster than traditional arms procurement.
- spwa4 5mo agoI wonder what people actually expect the result of a "multipolar" world is going to be? Of course, this will mean a great many more conflicts.