The United States can’t be on the hook anymore for protecting the world, the president lectured.
“The defense of freedom is everybody’s business — not just America’s business,” he said in a White House address. “And it is particularly the responsibility of the people whose freedom is threatened.”
What feels like a quintessentially Trumpian speech was delivered by Richard Nixon in 1969.
Long before Donald Trump was unnerving Europe by scaling back U.S. security commitments to the continent, Nixon was doing the same for Asia. The intersection of those visions rattled the globe but also created new possibilities — including paving the way for South Korea to become a major arms dealer on the world stage.
The rise of South Korea’s weapons business can be traced back to the Vietnam War. After years of being mired in the conflict, Nixon decided Asian allies would need to take more responsibility for their own defense, rather than relying on U.S. troops.
The announcement of the Nixon Doctrine rippled across Asia, but South Korea was particularly struck with anxiety: About 20,000 American soldiers were withdrawn from the peninsula, leading to concern that the country would soon be abandoned. The memory of the Korean War, less than 20 years old, was still fresh in people’s minds. What would they do without military support from America?
For South Korea, the answer was to build: President Park Chung-hee, a controversial dictator who oversaw Seoul for nearly 16 years, began touting the need for a self-reliant national defense. South Korea began to invest huge sums of money in its defense industry, licensing the production of foreign weapons and, in some cases, reverse engineering and adapting foreign technologies.
Soon the country had developed sophisticated weapons that not only powered its own military but could also be sent abroad for a tidy profit. South Korea has since become the 9th-largest arms exporter in the world. And now, as the Trump administration debates pulling back its security commitments to NATO, it’s eager to move up the ranks; it is currently one of the fastest-growing arms exporter in the world, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, which collects data on arms transfers.
The projected combined revenue of the four largest South Korean defense companies — Hanwha Group, Hyundai Rotem, LIG Nex1 and Korea Aerospace Industries — is about $37 billion in 2026, a nearly four-time jump from 2021. Notably, South Korea has become the second-largest supplier to European NATO members, just behind the United States.
The expansion of South Korea’s defense industry across the globe comes at a time of major geopolitical disruption, which has presented an opportunity for the ambitious country to become a bigger player in world affairs.
Two major wars, one in Ukraine and the other in Iran, have led to an urgent and immediate need for arms. Not only are countries buying weapons to aid their allies in these wars or defend their own frontlines, but many are stockpiling in anticipation of further conflict during a period of widespread instability.
The U.S. retreat from the global stage under Trump has also created an opening for South Korean arms makers. Many longtime American allies have bristled at the Trump administration’s treatment, whether from broken treaties, steep tariffs or personal insults. And Trump has pushed NATO members to increase their defense spending, threatening that the U.S. will no longer help them in times of need. That alone has unsettled allies, making them question the dependability of the U.S. during moments of crisis.
All of this creates a core uncertainty in the global arms market that South Korea is poised to exploit: “The Americans are no longer as dependable as they were 10 years ago,” says Chungmin Lee, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
There’s also the question of supply: With the United States once again caught up in a war in the Middle East, much of the U.S. defense industry production is likely to go toward the conflict with Iran, straining an already overwhelmed supply chain and pushing other customers further down the queue.
Global instability, marked by war and fracturing relationships, may be bad for the world. But in South Korea, it’s good for business.
Europe is a particularly enthusiastic buyer amid Trump’s brushoff. At the center of South Korea’s rise as a defense supplier there is its sales of weapons to Poland — a partnership that embodies all the strengths of Seoul’s arms industry.
The relationship became especially crucial in 2022 after Russia invaded Ukraine. It was a moment of existential threat to those that bordered Russia: Who knew which country would become the Kremlin’s next target if Ukraine fell? To help Kyiv quickly, several Eastern European countries, including Poland, swiftly donated their Soviet-era tanks, which the Ukrainian army already knew how to operate. In return, they expected Western allies, especially Germany, to come to their aid by swiftly providing replacements and further supporting Ukraine. Yet Germany’s early moves were characterized by caution and hesitation, leading to frustration across the region.
Into that vacuum stepped South Korea, which emerged as a reliable alternative supplier for anxious Eastern European governments. Poland became South Korea’s largest customer, signing a $13.7 billion arms deal that included K2 tanks, rocket launchers, artillery and more.
“Warsaw’s turn towards South Korean defense procurement stems partly from a profound disappointment with Germany’s initial response to the war in Ukraine — a feeling echoed across NATO’s eastern flank,” says Oskar Pietrewicz, a senior analyst at the Polish Institute of International Affairs. “Berlin’s hesitation to send military aid and its slow delivery of replacement Leopard tanks to allies who had donated Soviet-era armor created a significant trust gap, and South Korea successfully filled this void.”
South Korea’s weaponry stood out to Warsaw for a few key reasons, the most important being fast delivery. Perhaps an emphasis on speed is inevitable for a society built on the culture of bbali-bbali, the famous Korean phrase that means “hurry, hurry.”
But the emphasis on efficiency was also backed up by a defense industry that was already operating at high capacity due to the constant threat from North Korea; while the peninsula may be free of conflict for now, a peace treaty was never signed between the two countries, and they are still technically at war. As a result, major South Korean defense companies have maintained active production lines — a readiness that has proved valuable amid today’s geopolitical crises.
“We were preparing for North Korea, but we are now prepared and we are willing to offer these solutions to our customers around the world,” says Ju Hyung Kim, president at the Security Management Institute, a defense think tank affiliated with the South Korean National Assembly.
The preparation for potential battle with North Korea has also helped lower costs, since weapons are manufactured on a large scale to meet domestic demand alongside that of foreign buyers. A combination of a domestic supply chain, lower labor and production costs, and state backing helps keep prices low. It’s a particularly attractive advantage for cash-strapped governments that are looking to modernize their militaries at speed and scale.
Another enticing feature of South Korea’s defense industry? Its willingness to offer technology transfer and local production — two perks that are much harder to come by with traditional Western defense exporters.
The drawbacks for South Korea are obvious: It could reduce long-term dependence on the original supplier and ultimately create future competition. As a matter of fact, South Korea’s booming defense industry is a product of such technology transfer. Licensing production of foreign weapons, many from the U.S., was a key component of South Korea’s arms industry starting in the 1970s.
But South Korean defense firms remain willing to build local production hubs and share their technology with other countries in order to stand out in the market. It’s a particularly attractive offer to middle powers trying to become more self-sustainable as longtime geopolitical alliances erode, and a key reason why Poland decided to sign a deal with Seoul.
“That’s the Polish experience — that despite our agreements with the U.S., with Germany, with other European countries in recent 30 years… we’ve got nothing in terms of defense industry cooperation. In fact, our defense industry was not strengthened,” Pietrewicz says. For Warsaw, the hope is that technology transfers and local production from South Korean defense companies will revitalize domestic defense sectors, generate employment and set up regional maintenance hubs.
South Korean companies have also won fans by their willingness to customize their products based on their clients’ needs. Take the unusual request Egypt made to South Korea’s Hanwha Aerospace: Could a howitzer designed to bombard targets on land be modified to strike moving warships at sea?
It was an unorthodox way of using artillery — such modifications had never been made for South Korean K9 self-propelled howitzers. It would, however, save Egypt a lot of money by eliminating the need to stock reserves of dedicated anti-ship missiles.
And so Hanwha said yes. The modified system succeeded in testing, giving Egypt a new coastal-defense option and Seoul another powerful selling point. Egypt purchased hundreds of the weapons in a $1.7 billion deal in 2022.
One often overlooked perk of buying from a South Korean defense company is its lack of political baggage — something that several top weapons exporters seem to have these days. Many Europeans aren’t fans of the Trump administration; buying from adversaries like China and Russia is unthinkable; Israel’s reputation has been tarnished by its war in Gaza.
“No one is going to question, ‘Why do you buy weapons from Korea?’” says Ramón Pacheco Pardo, who is an international relations professor at King’s College London and has written several books on the peninsula.
South Korea’s reliability also makes it a political winner — especially when compared to the U.S., which is struggling to keep up with demand and delaying shipments.
“These things are very expensive,” says Cara Abercrombie, an assistant secretary of defense for acquisition under the Biden administration. “You’ve got parliaments that have approved spending, and from a domestic political standpoint, you’ve just appropriated billions of dollars for something you won’t see for several years. That becomes politically hard to defend.”
All these factors — the speed, affordability, generous technology transfers, customization and politics — have helped South Korea establish itself in a market that has traditionally been hard to break into.
The question for South Korea now is where to go from here.
The country is ambitious: It wants to be the fourth-largest arms exporter in the world by 2030. That is a steep hill to climb, but South Korean weapons have recently gotten some good PR via the war in Iran. Cheongung-II, an air defense system made by LIG Nex1 that had never been tested in combat until this war, reportedly hit 29 out of 30 missiles or drones it targeted in the United Arab Emirates — a signal to the world that South Korean weapons are affordable and effective at the same time.
The challenges, however, are also clear, the biggest one being that they are still overshadowed by their well-established competitors. While South Korean tanks and air defense systems have gotten rave reviews, aircrafts and large naval vessels — which are a major money maker — have yet to capture the attention of the world.
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.
“Compared to the European suppliers that had hundreds of years of experience and reputation, we’re not so accepted as a trustworthy player, so it’s going to be a real hurdle for us,” says Kim.
Europe is also increasingly pushing for “strategic autonomy,” a desire to reduce dependence on non-European defense suppliers and strengthen Europe’s own defense industry. Though the idea might have risen as a response to the growing uncertainty around U.S. commitments to European security, the push to “buy local” and bolster the defense market within Europe will undoubtedly affect South Korea in the long run.
“South Korea’s entry into the European NATO marketplace has significantly disrupted established market dynamics,” says Pietrewicz. “To counter this and foster a unified European defense market, EU financial initiatives… are designed to prioritize European contractors while restricting third-country involvement.”
Then there’s the issue of Japan. For decades, Japan had effectively banned the export of lethal weapons under its pacifist postwar constitution. That changed in April, when Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi announced the country would lift its restrictions, opening a path to sell advanced arms to allies. Tokyo isn’t starting from scratch either: Japanese firms have already jointly produced sophisticated weapons systems with the U.S., including Patriot PAC-3 missile interceptors manufactured by Mitsubishi Heavy Industries under license from Lockheed Martin. Japan also already has well-established ties with Southeast Asia — the Philippines is likely going to be Tokyo’s first customer — which will eat into South Korea’s profit in the region.
What matters, though, may not be whether South Korea actually overtakes more of the established giants of the global arms trade by 2030. The goal itself serves a purpose, and more importantly, sends a message to future buyers.
“You are telling your own industry, and obviously other countries as well, that you plan to continue to invest in this sector and continue to export, and that we’re going to remain a reliable and stable supplier,” says Pacheco Pardo, “which is what potential clients want to hear.”