South Korea Now Builds Warships for Latin America — and Sells Guns to the US
South Korea's defense industry has reached an inflection point: it is co-building warships for Peru, supplying the US Army with its own artillery, and about to deliver its first indigenous fighter jet. The question is what this means for the global arms trade.
The week South Korea stopped importing guns
Seventy-six years ago, the Republic of Korea entered the Korean War with no combat aircraft. It borrowed ten F-51 Mustangs from US forces stationed in Japan, and ten pilots learned to fly them in roughly a week. South Korea’s defense industry was, for decades, defined by one thing: dependency.
Last week, that narrative fractured visibly.
HD Hyundai Heavy Industries oversaw the launching of the Chimbote, a new amphibious support vessel built in partnership with Peru’s SIMA shipyard — the first time South Korea has co-constructed a warship on foreign soil. On the same stretch of days, Hanwha Aerospace secured a contract to supply the US Army with prototypes of its K9MH wheeled howitzer, the first time a Korean-made weapon system has been selected for an American modernization program. And South Korea’s air force is days away from taking delivery of the first mass-produced KF-21 fighter jet, eleven years after development began.
These are not three separate stories. They are the same story told at three different altitudes.
What Peru changes
The Chimbote launch is being celebrated domestically as a technical milestone. Internationally, it is something else: a demonstration that South Korea is willing and able to export defense industrial capacity, not just hardware.
The contract — part of a four-vessel order placed by the Peruvian Navy in 2024 — follows a new template. Instead of building ships in Ulsan and shipping them across the Pacific, HD Hyundai is transferring know-how and working side by side with SIMA workers in Callao. Two more vessels of the same class are already under construction in South Korea; the second Peruvian ship, the Talara, has completed its land-based assembly.
This model matters because it lowers the political friction that typically accompanies arms sales to the Western Hemisphere. The United States has long been the dominant supplier of military hardware to Latin America, and Washington closely monitors any shift in that balance. A Korean-built warship assembled in Peru carries fewer strategic strings than an American one — and far fewer diplomatic complications for Lima, which has been seeking to diversify its defense partnerships.
The same playbook could work in the Philippines, where HD Hyundai already has a decade of experience supplying naval vessels. If the company can replicate its Ulsan model in Subic, South Korea would have established a co-production foothold in two theaters simultaneously — one in the Americas, one in Southeast Asia.
What the US contract means
The K9MH selection is arguably the more consequential development of the week, even if it is smaller in dollar value. Hanwha’s contract is worth roughly $130 million for six prototype vehicles, with a cumulative face value of about $263 million. The South Korean defense industry estimates that a full production run could reach 500 howitzers and exceed 10 trillion won — a figure that would place it among the largest single defense export programs in Korean history.
But the dollar amount is almost beside the point. The K9MH has been chosen by the US Army as part of its Next Generation Howitzer program, a multi-year effort to replace the M777 towed howitzer that has been the backbone of American artillery since the 1970s. A Korean wheeled self-propelled gun sitting inside US Army test ranges is a structural shift — however incremental — in the global arms trade.
For the American military, the calculus is practical: the K9 platform offers mobility, rapid deployment, and a proven track record in countries from Norway to Australia. For South Korea, the implication is symbolic and material. It means American soldiers will evaluate Korean engineering under live-fire conditions. If the program proceeds to full production — and industry observers consider that likely absent any show-stopping defects — South Korea becomes a supplier to the very military that once equipped its own forces with borrowed aircraft.
The deal also reflects careful strategic timing. Hanwha’s executive leadership reportedly anticipated the US Army’s renewed interest in wheeled artillery platforms as early as March 2024, positioning the company to submit a competitive proposal before other potential bidders had fully mobilized.
The fighter jet that closes the loop
The KF-21 delivery, scheduled for mid-next month, completes a triangle. South Korea will become the eighth nation in the world to develop and operate a 4.5-generation supersonic fighter jet indigenously — joining an exclusive club that includes the United States, Russia, China, France, the United Kingdom, Sweden, and Israel.
Six prototype aircraft accumulated roughly 1,600 high-difficulty flight tests over 42 months with zero accidents. The first production batch will enter service focused on air-to-air missions under the Block I specification. Block II, planned for a second production run of 80 aircraft, will expand capabilities further. Work on a follow-on platform is expected to begin in the 2030s.
The historical contrast is stark. In 1950, South Korea’s air force could not defend its own skies. Today, it is operating a domestically engineered combat aircraft developed in partnership with Indonesia — a detail that underscores how far the country’s defense industrial policy has shifted from pure import substitution toward joint development as an export strategy.
Who wins, who loses, what comes next
The winners are clear: South Korea’s defense conglomerates, which have transformed from license producers into technology exporters; allied navies in the Global South that now have a credible alternative to Western suppliers; and US warfighters who gain access to a competitive artillery platform.
The losers are harder to name precisely, but the pressure is real. Traditional European and American defense contractors now face a competitor that combines Western-level engineering with lower labor costs and a willingness to transfer production technology — a combination that has proven irresistible to countries like Peru that want capability without dependency.
What comes next is less certain. The K9MH program remains in the prototype phase; nothing guarantees a production contract. The Peruvian co-production model is unproven at scale. And South Korea’s defense export boom coincides with rising geopolitical tensions in East Asia, which could constrain the government’s willingness to sell advanced systems to third parties without careful alignment with Washington and Tokyo.
But the direction is unmistakable. A country that once borrowed fighter jets to defend its skies is now selling howitzers to the American military and building warships in Latin America. The question is no longer whether South Korea belongs in the global arms trade. It is how much of it it intends to take.