South Korea is using a $13.7 billion arms deal with Poland – Seoul’s biggest ever – to lay the groundwork for a military-industrial juggernaut that the two nations’ defense companies hope will feed Europe’s hunger for weapons far into the future.
Reuters spoke to 13 company executives and government officials, including those directly involved in the deal, who said the arrangement provides a blueprint for using international public-private partnerships and consortiums to extend Seoul’s reach and achieve its ambition to be one of the world’s biggest weapons suppliers.
The deal established consortiums of South Korean and Polish companies that will build the weapons, maintain the fighter jets and provide the framework to eventually supply other European states, said Lukasz Komorek, director of the Export Projects Office at the state-owned Polish Armaments Group . “It may work for some countries at very, very low volume,” he added of Polish-brokered South Korean weapons sales, discussing challenges the joint operation might face.At a Hanwha Aerospace factory on South Korea’s southern coast, six huge automated robots and more than 150 production workers are churning out 47-ton K9s destined for Poland.
“Countries’ interest in South Korea’s offer may only grow considering the limited production capacity of Germany’s defense industry, which is a major arms supplier in the region,” he said.A close relationship between South Korea’s military and its arms industry allows them to rearrange domestic orders to make room for export production and expand production in the country’s highly industrialized manufacturing base, officials said.
After the Polish defense minister’s visit in May 2022 to observe South Korean weapons, and Yoon Suk Yeol met with Polish President Andrzej Duda on the sidelines of the NATO summit in June that year, the stage was set for the huge deal that was finalized a month later, Kim said.
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