2 years ago
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Changwon, South Korea CNN —
With a blinding yellowish flash and a concussion that shakes bones, K9 self-propelled howitzers motorboat artillery shells onto a elevation that’s conscionable been deed by rockets fired from helicopters. Then K2 tanks roar in, speeding up roads and firing arsenic they go.
This is portion of DX Korea, a four-day South Korean defence expo held successful September astatine a firing scope successful Pocheon, astir 30 kilometers (18.6 miles) from the North Korean border.
The show – presented to a assemblage of 2,000 radical including subject officials from much than 2 twelve countries – is 1 mode South Korea sells weapons.
And President Yoon Suk Yeol wants to merchantability much of them – capable for Seoul to jump 4 places up the ranks to go the world’s fourth-biggest arms exporter.
“By entering the world’s apical 4 defence exporters aft the United States, Russia and France, the (South Korean) defence manufacture volition go a strategical industrialization and a defence powerhouse,” Yoon said.
To bash that, South Korea volition person to outsell – successful ascending bid – the United Kingdom, Italy, Germany and yet China, which held 4.6% of the export marketplace successful the 2017-2021 period, according to the authoritative Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI).
That’s nary casual task, yet Seoul is already good connected its way. From 2012 to 2016, it had conscionable 1% of the planetary market. It much than doubled that successful the pursuing five-year period, capturing 2.8% – by acold the largest summation among immoderate of the world’s apical 25 arms exporters.
In 2021, it sold $7 cardinal worthy of weapons overseas, according to the Export-Import Bank of Korea.
And the South Korean defence manufacture believes it has the arsenal to drawback an adjacent bigger portion of the pie.
South Korea’s weapons exports person ballooned successful caller years, but the state has been gathering its arms manufacture for decades, spurred connected by its troubled narration with its bluish neighbor.
As of 2020, subject expenditures represented 2.8% of South Korea’s gross home product, according to SIPRI, good supra the 2% threshold considered a minimum by galore US allies.
“The North Korean menace has fixed america a bully reason, a information to marque definite that our weapons are precise good,” says Chun In-bum, a erstwhile lieutenant wide successful the South Korean Army.
Technically, the Korean War ne'er ended, due to the fact that the papers that stopped the combat successful 1953 was an armistice, not a bid treaty.
In the archetypal decades aft the warring ended, South Korea’s defence was heavy babelike connected American troops and weaponry.
Things began to alteration successful the 1970s, erstwhile the US was distracted by the warfare successful Vietnam and the Cold War with the Soviet Union.
South Korea began to instrumentality much work for its ain defence and invested $42 cardinal successful US subject assistance successful factories to nutrient M-16 rifles, according to the Korea Development Institute (KDI).
By the extremity of the decade, Korean researchers nether the absorption of the country’s National Defense Science Institute had succeeded successful making each basal weaponry, according to a 2014 KDI report.
With the ever-present threats from the North, Seoul initiated a National Defense Tax to wage for the improvement of a modern military, including the armored systems and different subject instrumentality that Korean defence companies are selling today.
Back connected the hillside aft the live-fire demonstration, prospective customers listened intently to the pitches of the South Korean representatives.
Delegations had arrived from arsenic acold afield arsenic Mexico, Thailand, Nigeria and the Philippines. An Indian wide asked for the ranges of a limb connected display. Qatari officers inspected a K2 up close.
Conspicuously, nary of the imaginable customers were from Ukraine.
But that doesn’t mean South Korea’s arms manufacture isn’t seeing a relation successful Ukraine’s warfare with Russia.
A US defence authoritative told CNN this period that Washington intends to bargain 100,000 rounds of artillery ammunition from South Korean arms manufacturers to supply to Ukraine.
The rounds volition beryllium transferred to Ukraine via the US, allowing Seoul to instrumentality to its nationalist pledge that it would not nonstop lethal assistance to the war-torn country.
In a connection issued aft the planned acquisition was archetypal revealed successful The Wall Street Journal, the South Korean Defense Ministry said it had not changed its presumption connected shipping weapons to Ukraine, and that it believed the “end user” of the ammunition was the US.
Russian President Vladimir Putin had said precocious past period that South Korea had decided to nonstop “arms and ammunition” to Kyiv, which would “ruin our relations” with them – a assertion denied a time aboriginal by President Yoon.
A South Korean statesmanlike decree that enforces the country’s Foreign Trade Act says its exports tin lone beryllium utilized for “peaceful purposes” and “shall not impact planetary peace, information maintenance, and nationalist security.”
South Korea is besides a signatory to the United Nations’ Arms Trade Treaty, ratified successful 2014 with the volition of keeping adjacent power connected who gets weapons and nether what conditions they tin beryllium used. Ukraine is simply a signatory but hasn’t ratified it.
But the planned US ammunition transportation isn’t the lone mode the power of South Korea’s arms manufacture volition beryllium felt successful Ukraine.
In September, South Korea signed a woody with Poland for its biggest arms merchantability ever, successful which it volition proviso Warsaw with astir 1,000 of Hyundai Rotem’s K2 tanks, much than 600 of Hanwha’s K9s, and dozens of combatant jets from Korean Aerospace Industries.
The woody volition alteration Poland to regenerate galore of the weapons that Warsaw has sent to Kyiv.
“Poland needed weapons to support themselves, and that’s precisely what we’re providing,” Chun says. “We Koreans recognize that without weapons to support yourself, the extremity effect is simply a tragedy.”
The changeless menace of a North Korean onslaught is 1 crushed subject accumulation lines were established successful the confederate larboard metropolis of Changwon, the cradle of South Korea’s modern arms industry.
The metropolis is successful a earthy basin, surrounded by mountains connected each sides, making it easier to defend. The city’s main road, Changwon-daero, has a 14.9-kilometer (9.25-mile) agelong that tin treble arsenic a runway successful times of nationalist emergency.
At its confederate extremity is the Changwon National Industrial Complex, established successful the 1970s and location to the Hanwha Defense and Hyundai Rotem factories, wherever artillery pieces and tanks trundle disconnected the assembly lines.
Overseas orders are rolling successful this year, notably the landmark woody with Poland which the Korea Defense Industry Association estimates to beryllium worthy $15.3 billion.
Hanwha puts its stock of that statement astatine $2.4 billion, its largest declaration for the K9.
Poland is 1 of 9 countries – alongside South Korea, Turkey, Finland, India, Norway, Estonia, Australia and Egypt – to bargain the howitzer from Hanwha.
Lee Boo-hwan, an enforcement vice president of Hanwha Defense’s overseas concern division, says the institution wants to beryllium a semipermanent spouse to countries that bargain its weapons. To that end, it is mounting up caller manufacturing facilities successful Australia, Egypt and Poland.
“My workers are precise blessed to stock our technology,” Lee says. “It is our main strategical absorption to participate (new) markets.”
It’s besides astir continuously updating and improving the product, helium says, and that’s happening wrong South Korea.
The institution has already prototyped the K9A2 tank, which situates the unit extracurricular the turret to marque them little susceptible to attack, and is processing “a much futuristic, adjacent procreation version,” Lee says.
“It is afloat automated operation, unmanned platform,” with artificial quality to fto it larn connected the battlefield, helium says.
At a sprawling, modern analyzable successful Changwon, Hanwha’s robots churn retired the artillery pieces for K9s astatine the complaint of 1 portion each 3 to 5 days.
A operation of robots and humans harvester connected a seven-station assembly enactment to enactment unneurotic what volition yet beryllium 47 metric tons of steel, machinery and electronics.
One robot, much than 2 stories high, welds the turrets, the brightness of the white-hot process lighting up the cavernous assembly building.
Further down the line, different robot bores holes successful the green-painted steel, switching bits automatically arsenic it goes astir its enactment with an accuracy of 1/100th of a millimeter, thinner than a quality hair, according to a Hanwha Defense official.
Once the robots are done, it is the crook of Hanwha’s workers. Each hull arsenic it goes on the enactment bears the pictures of 11 of them.
“We supply excellence by name,” says Lee, the Hanwha enforcement vice president.
At each assembly station, there’s a “tollgate,” with green, yellowish and reddish lights. Any idiosyncratic tin halt the enactment with a reddish airy and summon engineers if they spot a problem.
At the last halt is the bore sighting, wherever the accuracy of the K9’s weapon is tested connected a people astatine the acold extremity of the workspace.
The completed units past spell extracurricular for show testing, causing the crushed to vibrate arsenic they roar on a paved roadworthy adjacent their apical velocity of 67 kilometers per hr (42 mph).
Test drivers rotation the tracked howitzer 1 mode past the other, the rubber pads connected the tracks leaving donuts connected the concrete.
As the drivers enactment the units done their paces, Lee explains however Hanwha customizes K9s for its overseas customers: those bound for bluish climates similar Norway get other vigor sources for the crew; those made for hotter places similar India oregon Egypt get much aerial conditioning. Some of the factory’s K9s are headed for Poland this year.
Jack Watling, elder probe chap for onshore warfare astatine the Royal United Services Institute successful London, says South Korea is the cleanable investigating ground.
Its seasons scope from deep-freeze winters to monsoons and summertime vigor of 30 degrees Celsius oregon higher – and it has some level and mountainous terrain.
“That is simply a beauteous unsocial acceptable of analyzable variables successful presumption of having a conveyance that’s reliable crossed climatic conditions,” Watling says.
And that’s attracted overseas buyers, helium says.
Just a fewer miles from wherever the K9 artillery pieces are being tested, the K2 tanks astatine the Hyundai Rotem mill are being enactment done their paces.
Again, the latest lawsuit is Poland.
“This is our archetypal clip straight exporting our (K2),” says Kim, the Hyundai Rotem VP.
Orders from South Korea’s subject support the K2 assembly enactment engaged capable – but the Polish bid means Hyundai Rotem tin adhd capacity.
This is fundamentally similar buying a caller car disconnected the lot. In the vessel world, you can’t rather thrust your caller K2 location that day, but you get the idea.
“The astir important happening is that it is presently being produced,” Kim says.
Hanwha Defense has its eyes connected 1 marketplace successful peculiar – the United States, the world’s largest defence market.
“We privation to participate the US marketplace with enactment from a US section institution and also, we privation to lend to the US Army and the US section defence industry,” says Lee, the Hanwha VP.
In 2021, US subject spending was $801 billion. But South Korean weapons and ammunition exports to the US accounted for lone $95 million, according to the US Commerce Department.
Overall, US subject spending was much than the adjacent 9 countries combined, according to SIPRI. South Korea ranked 10th.
But the South Korean defence manufacture should beryllium seen arsenic a spouse that complements its American counterpart, alternatively than competes with it, Chun says.
That monolithic US subject fund includes immense expenditure connected top-shelf items. That’s not what Seoul is selling, helium points out.
“There are portions of a spectrum of weapons that the United States does not make, due to the fact that they consciousness they don’t request to. It doesn’t marque a nett for their industry. That’s what we’re targeting. The systems that we person sold to Poland are precisely those benignant of systems,” helium says.
“I’m hoping that the United States understands that this is simply a partnership,” Chun adds.
“The United States makes the top and champion weapons successful the world,” helium says, “but they don’t marque each of them.”
English (US)