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.
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.
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. The Boramae and GE Aviation).
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.
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.
>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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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...
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.
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. The Boramae and GE Aviation).
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.
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...
>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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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...
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!