What Kinds of Weapons Does South Korea Produce and Export?

The Republic of Korea (ROK) held its first major military parade in a decade on Tuesday, flexing its military muscle amid escalating peninsular tensions following the breakdown of personal diplomacy between leaders in Pyongyang, Seoul, and Washington after the Trump and Moon administrations left office in 2021 and 2022.

Some 3,700 troops and 170 pieces of military equipment marched and rolled through the streets of Seoul, including tanks and amphibious assault vehicles, drones, missiles, and air defense systems, with many of them manufactured by major South Korean conglomerates you’ve probably heard of.

As might be expected on the occasion of the 75th anniversary of the ROK military’s founding, Tuesday’s parade in Seoul featured some of South Korea’s latest weapons and equipment, including K1A1/K1A2 and K2 Black Panther series tanks. Produced by Hyundai Rotem, introduced into service in 2014, and touted as one of the first fourth-generation tanks in the world, the K2 has been successfully exported to Poland, which plans to buy up to 1,000 K2s in total – with an estimated 260 also in service with South Korea’s military at present. The tanks boast a 120 mm 55-caliber smoothbore gun with automatic loader, advanced armor, and an automatic lock-on capability against ground and air targets at ranges of up to 10 km using an onboard thermographic camera. The tank has a three-man crew and a curb weight of 55 tons.

Hanwha Aerospace K21 Korea Next-generation Infantry Fighting Vehicles, or (KNIFVs), were also seen rumbling down Seoul’s rain-soaked streets Tuesday, with the ROK fielding about 550 of the armored vehicles, and Australia planning to order close to 130 of them to modify them into a domestic IFV called the Redback. The IFV has a three-man crew, can carry up to nine passengers distances up to 500 km without refueling, and features sophisticated glass fiber-reinforced ceramic armor, providing protection against everything from light machinegun fire to artillery shrapnel. The K21 also features a 40 mm autocannon, a 7.62 mm M60 machine gun, and twin AT-1K Raybolt anti-tank guided missiles.

K9 Thunder self-propelled howitzers, built by Hanwha Aerospace, also made an appearance. Over 1,700 of the systems have been built since their introduction in the late 1990s, with the howitzers featuring a Hyundai-made 155 mm 52-caliber gun capable of firing shells distances from 18 to 60 km. The system is one of South Korea’s biggest export successes to date, with Poland, Norway, Estonia, Finland, Turkiye, and India purchasing them, as well as Australia and Egypt confirming orders. Some countries bought the equipment directly from the ROK, with others acquiring licenses from Hanwha and Seoul. Warsaw is known to have delivered about 50 pieces of the Polish AHS Krab variant of the K9 to Ukraine, with Russian forces reportedly having destroyed over a dozen of them as of late May 2023.

K239 Chunmoo rocket artillery systems, produced by Korea Defense Industry and Hanwha Aerospace, also appeared at the parade, with the MLRS capable of firing munitions of calibers ranging from 131-600 mm, and featuring an effective firing range from 36 to 290 km, with a single volley of fire reportedly sufficient to rain destruction across ground equivalent to three football fields. The systems have been exported to the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, and Poland.

KM-SAM Cheongung medium-range surface-to-air missile systems featured prominently in the parade as well. These SAMs, jointly created by the Korean Agency for Defense Development and Russia’s Almaz-Antey and produced by South Korean aerospace manufacturer LIG Nex1 Co., Ltd., feature a 400 kg air defense missile, a maximum firing range of up to 40 km, a flight altitude of 15-20 km, and an operating speed of Mach 4-5.

The surface-to-surface Hyunmoo-series of strategic missiles first introduced in the 1980s and upgraded nearly a dozen times since then were also put on display, with the 500 kg missiles capable of flying up to 3,000 km from their mobile launch platforms, which can include warships. The systems are manufactured by LIG Nex1 and Hanwha.

Finally, Tuesday’s display of military power also included the first-ever demonstration of an L-SAM, or Long-range Surface-to-Air Missile, the prospective domestic air and missile defense system being developed by the Agency for Defense Development, Hanwha, and LIG Nex1, and expected to feature a firing range of up to 150 km. The system is set to be introduced into service with the ROK military in 2026, and has been compared in terms of its capabilities with the US Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) and Russian S-400 missile system.

Depending on its American allies for weapons for several decades after the country’s creation in 1948, the ROK’s defense sector was born in the 1970s as the state began to make major investments in heavy and chemical industries under the country’s ambitious, and largely successful, five-year economic development plans, with the concept borrowed from the country's northern and eastern neighbors.

While production initially focused on licensed copies of simple American weapons like small arms, by the 1980s the country began to create more complex weaponry from scratch, often based on reverse-engineered American designs or in cooperation with US manufacturers. For example, the ROK unveiled its first homegrown tank, the K1 88, in the late 1980s, with the Abrams-inspired main battle tank developed jointly with Chrysler Defense and Hyundai Precision Industry, a subsidiary of the popular global automaker.

Nearly all of the ROK’s largest weapons designers and manufacturers are also producers of other commercial and consumer industrial goods, among them companies like KIA, Daewoo, shipbuilding giant Korea Shipbuilding and Engineering, and electronics major Samsung.

Some 50 years after the birth of its domestic defense industrial base, South Korea accounts for about three percent of the global weapons market, up from just one percent as recently as five years ago. At home, Daewoo-produced small arms account for as much as half of the country’s infantry weapons needs. The country’s tank fleet consists of an eclectic mix of upgraded M48 Pattons, modifications of the Russian T-80U (delivered in the 1990s and early 2000s as part of a Russian-South Korea debt deal), and the homegrown K1 and K2 MBTs. The same goes for armored vehicles and artillery, with the K200, K21 KNIFV, K806, and K808 making up much of the country’s armored personnel carrier and light infantry vehicle needs, and the KH178, KH179 K9 Thunder, and K-136 Kooryong MLRS providing howitzer and artillery support.

On the surface-to-surface missile and aerial drone fronts too, domestic designs like the Hyunmoo series of strategic missiles, the KM-SAM series of portable anti-aircraft systems, and the Korean Aerospace Industries (KAI) produced KUS-9 drones have been slowly edging out US and Israeli imports to make up the backbone of the Asian nation’s missile and unmanned aerial vehicle capabilities. The same goes for the Navy, with South Korea producing its own lines of destroyers, frigates, corvettes, patrol boats, mine warfare ships, and amphibious assault craft. And although the ROK Air Force currently depends on mostly American-made fighter jets, helicopters, and support aircraft, more and more domestic designs, including the KAI T-50 Golden Eagle, the KAI KF-21 Boramae fighter (in development), and the Surion series of utility transport helicopters, are breaking through.