The rise of South Korea’s weapons business | Hacker News Reader

The rise of South Korea’s weapons business

politico.com

158 pointsJumpCrisscross60 comments

This 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-exporte...

They 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).

The 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.

If the US is ever in that situation again we won't be measuring cost of any manufacturable thing in dollars

Correct it’ll be in Yen

Do you have any evidence of this?

Also “and margins” seems like a stupid thing to add. Margins are high during peacetime and wartime alike. And it’s not parallel to bribes / kickbacks which are corrupt and illegal. Margins are the natural outcome of capitalism + monopoly.

Having S Korean competition means those margins would likely drop over time.

>Do you have any evidence of this?

I have been advisor to some people signing the deals. I would say that depending on the project in my slice of the industry at least 25-30% were outright redistributed to various stakeholders.

Confirmed. The second industry with such redistribution is oil and gas, 5-15%.

My figures are from ~2005.

Fun stories of hearing about key equipment gets caught up in Libyan customs. Weeks and weeks of meeting various officials, learning about each others families, drinking tea, etc, before 'the cost of compliance' is finally raised.

> Margins are high during peacetime and wartime alike

Countries with high margins during wartime don't typically win wars against peer powers. Cf nazi germany vs the soviet union. This is typically a luxury you see when rich countries fight poor ones (in absolute terms, including capital in the form of production capacity and tech IP/know-how)

> Margins are high during peacetime and wartime alike.

Perhaps when fighting foreign jaunts against a minnow. Preserving high margins in an grinding, existential war against a peer would be considered anything from unpatriotic, to outright illegal war profiteering, and carries a real risk of the shareholders losing control and/or ownership of the organization through various war-time instruments.

> Nobody thinks that they will fight a real war in which they will need a lot of hardware.

Germany is literally thinking there will be war and getting ready for it. The war is more likely then 4 years ago.

Cost is a factor, and a significant factor, but not the only one.

Flip-side of cost is effectiveness, and it would be interesting to see real-world data on the accuracy, reliability, and longevity of Korean weapons systems in active combat. I suspect the Koreans are also anxious to see this given their own geopolitical situation and northern neighbour. The article doesn't go here either.

It does, correctly IMO, focus on the reliability of the US as arms supplier, given the increasing control over access as a political weapon of retribution and reward, potential "kill switches" in US arms, the limited total production capacity of the US, and particularly in light of the latter, stocks depletion and unavailability on the basis of capricious gallivanting into ill-conceived conflicts with little gain if not actually worsening its subsequent position, strength, and status.

The Koreas both have an extensive reliance on artillery. Seoul is within range of PRK batteries, Pyonyang not so much from ROK, but any invading forces would be. I suspect ROK counterartillery systems are well developed, and that given the effectiveness of drones in recent years and the likelihood PRK might rely on these that there are, or soon will be, effective countermeasures against them.

Antiballistic missile systems would also be useful for ROK. I know nothing of this, but find that there is a Wikipedia article on the topic: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_Air_and_Missile_Defense>.

>Cost is a factor, and a significant factor, but not the only one.

The REAL significant factor is that Korean arms companies are not just sealing weapons, but also willing to sell IP to their allies for you to manufacture their weapons domestically, something very rare in the arms business.

It's why Poland chose to license and manufacture Korean weapons domestically rather than buy superior weapon systems from their EU and NATO allies and neighbors France and Germany, since those two typically only sell weapons but never IP, as they see IP as valuable trade secrets and leverage.

Sovereign supply chain and manufacturing for arms is more important for your national security than price and having the most bleeding edge systems if those imported systems can be withheld against you if your ally wants to squeeze something out of you at some point in the future over petty political squabbles, and Poland has less chances of having beef with Korea on the other side of the planet than with neighboring France and Germany. So it's the most sane decision politically. A lot of countries got bit by this dependence that it's a valuable lesson every country should heethe.

Ding ding ding! This is a huge reason. Being able to bootstrap a domestic weapons manufacturing base is a massive win for any country these days. South Korea is one of the few countries that are both willing and able to do so with high quality modern materiel.

> I suspect ROK counterartillery systems are well developed, and that given the effectiveness of drones in recent years and the likelihood PRK might rely on these that there are, or soon will be, effective countermeasures against them.

I mean the obvious problem here is that they are completely untested in combat. Surprised there haven’t been some sweetheart deals to get these into Ukrainian hands

> I mean the obvious problem here is that they are completely untested in combat

The article mentions interceptors deployed to the UAE that recently successfully hit 29 Iranian drones out of 30.

Meta: this entire comment-chain accuses the article of not focusing on "the real reason" for success, but the article touches on everything mentioned: cost, IP sharing, IRL performance, and more (fast turn-around) are all mentioned in the article.

The thread head (<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48612438>) makes the accusation of omission, but specifically as regards cost.

In my own initial response, I explicitly note "It does, correctly IMO, focus on..." and continue to list several of the issues raised, in addition to expanding both on those and adding others. Subsequent discussion seems to evolve from there, no longer anchored to the root.

Overall, the article isn't great insofar as it omits or demphasises some factors; but no, it's not obtusely bad or incomplete either. And your own characterisation of the discussion as a whole is itself inaccurate.

This is also the case for things like nuclear reactor construction, except South Korea is cheaper by a far higher margin there.

Add in the US's latest antics about controlling the use of they weapons they sell, and in addition trying to bully and demean allies, and it's a mystery as to why anybody would ever use US suppliers these days.

  decline of 28.54% [US FMS notifications 2025 cf. 2024]

Although the article is more positive

Emerging Trends in the Trump Approach to Security Cooperation: https://www.stimson.org/2026/emerging-trends-in-the-trump-ap...

The 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

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X6X5zuthz-s

South 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.

> 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).

I'm extrapolating here but Gulf states are very much questioning the US-Israel shield and will likely use Korean weapons acquisition to demand greater security guarantees.

I absolutely think Korea can pose a major threat to the petrodollar arrangement if left unchecked so its in the interest of US to see they not lose anymore trust with gulf states.

It's not beyond the pale to think Korea can offer significant security guarantees but I will concede that is more of a post-unification type of scenario.

But the opportunity is opening and if Korea doesn't take it, Japan might or both countries might offer what gulf states look for : being honorable and without any territorial ambitions and for both countries it might be the ultimate dream to have sovereignty over their own energy resources without petrodollar breathing down their neck since WW2

"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."

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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.

The 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

Poland 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

The speed at which Korea has supplied tanks, artillery, munitions, and even set up local production faster than traditional arms procurement.

This 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.

Due 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-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).

Other countries with rising weapons businesses are Ukraine and Iran.

The best endorsement for a weapons manufacturer is winning a war against a tough opponent.

It’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.

The 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-Tho...

Volume 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.

>The US didn’t stop its offensive because of Iranian weapons.

I would say they did. Gulf countries ran out of missile and drone defenses and a lot of infrastructure was getting hit. Long run loss of capacity here would be worse than temporary strait closure and there were a lot of assets left to hit.

There has already been significant infrastructure capacity destruction. Hard to get an inventory on exactly what, but even if there were an actual peace agreement with full strait traversal, it will be years to resume previous production numbers. Qatar lost LNG trains and facilities which are estimated at 3-5 years to replace.

Just restoring shut in oil wells will take months. It is unlikely all wells will ever reach previous output levels.

Yes that's correct, thank you, I see my comment implied otherwise.

There had also been Iranian strikes on desalination plants and near the end strikes on Saudi Arabia's red sea assets. I believe these were very convincing.

Russia hasn't used Iranian drones for some years now. They got their own production running and have even shipped drones to Iran.

That's one of the problems with the lack of diplomacy in the US's position for the past 40 years. We have pushed the envelope beyond our own control:

"The U.S. military reverse-engineered Iran’s Shahed-136 loitering munition to create a low-cost, one-way attack drone squadron in the Middle East called LUCAS (Low-Cost Unmanned Combat Attack System)."

Necessity is the mother of invention. We spent billions in exchange for making our "enemies" stronger. We really are a ridiculous nation.

Shahed is already a copy of a German drone. I wonder how many copies of the same drone we are going to end up with.

The US, Russia and China all took turns losing wars to Afghanistan and Vietnam but nobody lines up to buy weapons from them because strategic victory (denying the enemy their war objectives) due to a lack of political will in the opponent or superior geography isn't the same thing as tactical victory due to better weapons.

Afghanistan and Vietnam didn't beat their adversaries through advanced military technology, but by the shear capacity to absorb unholy amounts of damage and injury. Arguably Iran is in a similar position, though its Shahed drones and ballistic missiles did prove capable of reaching out and touching others within the theatre (1,000 -- 2,000 km range), and that these systems were resilient against attempts by its adversaries to destroy both stocks and launchers.

Ukraine is the odd one out in that it has developed significant technological capabilities, largely with drones and anti-drone defences, and has active buyers for that tech.

Iran did supply Russia with Shaheds long before the current US attack on Iran, so they were at the fore front of drone technology (though if I recall correctly the design had evolved through time over adoption from other countries, perhaps originating in Germany?)

Which makes the US refusal to interact with, learn from, or adopt Ukrainian tech all the more frustrating. There are 13 US fighters that would likely still be alive today, if the current US establishment was t so irrational in their hate of Ukraine, and had adopted anti drove tactics common in Ukraine, including the P1-SUN interceptors that could have taken out the shaheds. Losing an AWACS is an embarrassment beyond words, honestly. Best thing would not have been to start a stupid unwinnable war without any clear objectives.

> Iran were at the forefront of drone technology.

Only one-way attack drones which are the lowest tech type of drones. ISR drones are much higher on the tech tree, and Iran aren't in the FPV drone game due to a lack of need for them.

That having been said, I couldn't agree more with your frustration around refusing to collaborate with and learn from Ukraine when it comes to Shaheds.

True, though Iran wasn't facing a hot war of aggression prior to the Twelve Day War (June 2025), which was the premise I was specifically addressing.

Iran's successes in the 2025 and 2026 conflicts would be within that premise.

Prior to 2025, and dating back to the mid-1980s, Iran and Israel have been engaged in a proxy conflict, but that also differs from the premise. In large part that's relied on the ability to inflict some pain on counterparties, but not necessarily by exhibiting technological superiority, and not to decisive effect on the part of either Iran or Israel for that matter. See: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran%E2%80%93Israel_proxy_conf...>.

Rational thought processes and the current US administration aren't even worth mention, though I'll suggest that the failure of what were once thought to be at least partially resistant institutions such as the military establishment against executive idiocy is especially disheartening.

The Shahed is an almost identical copy of an American drone the Iranians managed to force down in Iran by spoofing its GPS. The American drone was, in turn, a product of mostly Israeli technology.

I don't know why anyone would think the US isn't paying attention in Ukraine. This is all classified stuff, and we won't know what the US government is doing behind the curtain for decades. I might add that Ukraine relies heavily on the US-built medium range Hornet drone.

Technically true, but IRL we have a government where legions of key people in every aspect have either been outright eliminated, or replaced with sycophants and wildly corrupt profiteers - on a scale the US hasn't seen, perhaps, ever. Teapot Dome and Boss Tweed still had a largely competent executive branch, and an engaged legislature.

POTUS is widely considered to be in the pocket of, or under leverage of, Putin; other decisions are dictated by his unhinged, flighty, and purely emotional reactions.

The USAF is rife with Evangelist Christian bias, a problem that precedes the Orange Idiot. To restate: the branch of the military that should be benefitting the most from the tide change in aerial warfare is obsessed with public displays of religious conformity instead.

Ideally there are swift, barely detectable undercurrents of change upgrading our military focus by the elite powers atop the power structure, but in practice we have armed soldiers guarding a paint job on a public water pool.

Edit: Interestingly, ITT the Shahed has been claimed to be based on US tech, a basis for US Tech, based on German tech, and completely outdated.

The USA proceeded to ignore any advice that the Ukraine could give them when it came to drones being operated in the field under duress, where in many cases you had to ad lib, reconfigure, iterate on the spot, probably too proud to ask.

The North Vietnamese were famous for ad libbing, adapting on the spot, but in the end biggest weapon is the willingness to fight.

Russia and the United States never learn it isn’t about the best weapon or how much money you can spend…

I 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.

Sounds 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.

That's not true, they even sell in direct competition with the US (MLRS systems or tanks to Poland)

Gross 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.

Maybe 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?

Email 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.

Ok, we've put that in the title above. Thanks!

I 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

The original title, before dang corrected it (See: <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> and <https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html>, most of the first six 'graphs following "In Submissions" pertaining to titles.

This 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.

There 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-kore...

The 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.

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