South Korea’s $13.7 billion arms deal with Poland, struck in September 2022, couldn’t have come at a better time for Seoul. As the war in Ukraine spiked global demand for weapons and equipment, the move established Seoul as a major player in the arms export scene, which has traditionally been dominated by the United States and Russia. Seoul won’t just make money with this opening; it’s also a chance to forge deeper security ties well beyond the Korean Peninsula.
For decades, the United States has leveraged the hub-and-spokes model of alliances to shore up friends across Asia and the Indo-Pacific. Under this arrangement, Washington has guaranteed the security of allies, such as Japan, Taiwan, the Philippines, and Australia, through bilateral—rather than multilateral—arrangements. In return, these allies contributed to U.S. security and were also implicitly expected to support Washington’s security policies in Asia and beyond. Chief among these countries is South Korea. Its location on the Cold War fault line between capitalism and communism makes it a key partner for the United States in its efforts to counter North Korea and a rising China.
South Korea has proved itself to be a staunch ally of the United States over the 70-year history of the alliance—supporting U.S. military objectives, such as the wars in Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq, even when some other partners abstained.
But at the same time, Seoul has long prioritized independence and autonomy in its defense and security matters. While it destabilized relations, the Donald Trump presidency alone didn’t trigger this; it only accelerated the belief that, ultimately, South Korea must rely on its own military capabilities to protect itself. Thus, in recent years, South Korea has built a broad network of security partnerships in the hopes of not putting all of its geopolitical eggs into one alliance basket. Under both former President Moon Jae-in and current President Yoon Suk-yeol, South Korea has significantly expanded both the nations it partners with and the domains in which it cooperates.
Though it has long sought to diversify its security and foreign-policy portfolios, only recently has Seoul found the key to proving its viability as a major political and military partner: arms sales. At the turn of the century, South Korea was not even among the top 30 exporters in the world. Yet by 2022, with the full political support of the Moon and Yoon administrations, South Korea had become the world’s ninth-largest arms exporter. The increasing imminence of the Russian threat has made replenishing and upgrading arsenals an urgent task, and South Korea has benefitted from its ability to fulfill orders quickly—with state-of-the-art weapons, no less.
South Korea’s increased independence is already shaking up dynamics in Europe, where South Korean arms firms have stepped in to swiftly help replenish arms stocks depleted by support for Ukraine and unable to be met by the declining European defense industry.
Since the landmark deal with Poland, several of Russia’s neighbors have purchased their own military equipment from South Korea, including Estonia, Finland, and Norway. South Korea has also made waves in the international tank market, having beaten out German firms for major deals in Europe and, more recently, Australia.
Seoul has traditionally relied on exports to boost its economy, and its foray into arms sales may seem like little more than another attempt to boost its trade balance. But selling fighter jets and howitzers is hardly the same as exporting mobile phones or K-pop songs. South Korea isn’t just selling weapons for the sake of it; these sales are used as inroads for deeper cooperation with potentially valuable security partners.
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So-called fence-sitters are rejecting zero-sum geopolitical binaries in favor of multi-alignment.
Take the United Arab Emirates, for example. Weapons transfers and sales between the UAE and South Korea have morphed into a more comprehensive relationship over time, including combined training exercises, anti-piracy cooperation, military equipment and technology development programs, and information sharing. These security ties are part of an even more comprehensive package of economic and political cooperation.
Though arms sales are the hook, South Korea is marketing itself as more than an arms merchant. Yoon has cast his country as a “global pivotal state.” No longer conceived of solely as a regional power, he wants South Korea to be seen as an independent and reliable geopolitical partner that plays a key role in the political, security, and economic affairs of different regions of the world. The strategy is a rare area of consensus in the South Korean political scene, as both conservatives and liberals believe that diversifying geopolitical ties is in their country’s best interest.
If Yoon is to achieve this lofty goal, Seoul must demonstrate more independent behavior in global affairs. In this respect, Europe is arguably the region in which South Korean security ties are about to take the biggest qualitative leap, given the inroads made through recent arms sales. Previously, South Korea’s security ties in the region were mediated or at least facilitated by the United States. Increasingly, however, this is no longer the case. South Korea’s burgeoning links with NATO members have laid the groundwork for long-term cooperation. The European Union, Austria, Germany, Spain, and the United Kingdom are among several European players establishing or upgrading their links with Seoul in ways that fall below the level of official alliance status.
While South Korea’s efforts in Europe and the Middle East are aimed at boosting its global standing and improving the bottom line of its arms firms, its outreach in its own backyard is aimed specifically at countering North Korea and China. To that end, South Korea is developing a fighter jet with Indonesia, transferring patrol boats to Vietnam, and supplying vessels and joining military drills with the Philippines. India, meanwhile, is ramping up its purchases of South Korean military gear and exploring options for joint weapons production. South Korea is also quietly boosting security ties with Taiwan; Taipei’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the speaker of the parliament have publicly thanked South Korea for its support. Seoul has even started mending fences with Tokyo as the pair look to jointly enhance intelligence sharing and anti-missile defenses.
So long as the shadow of Trump or a Trump-like president returning to office in the United States looms over Washington’s Asian alliances, South Korea will continue to deepen ties with third countries and position itself as a central security actor in the region. To its credit, the administration of U.S. President Joe Biden has skillfully rekindled and boosted its security relationship with South Korea, confirming that the U.S.-South Korean alliance is no longer confined to the North Korean threat. But the Biden administration can’t guarantee which presidential candidate Iowa or Ohio voters will prefer when they cast their ballots in 2024. Like many other countries, South Korea is hedging its bets.
Seoul’s diversification of its security ties should not be seen as a negative development from the vantage point of the White House or Washington’s Capitol Hill. International relations isn’t necessarily a zero-sum game, and South Korea opening doors for new partnerships elsewhere does not automatically mean closing doors with the United States. On the contrary, many of the newer security ties that South Korea is developing include the United States, as is the case with trilateral cooperation between Seoul, Tokyo, and Washington, as well as burgeoning South Korea-NATO ties. No mainstream South Korean leader questions that the alliance with the United States is a cornerstone of their country’s security, and in poll after poll, more than 90 percent of South Koreans consistently support it.
Some U.S. arms manufacturers may fear losing market share to their South Korean competitors. But from a more self-interested perspective, South Korea boosting ties with other countries could actually help the United States reduce its military spending overseas: The more its allies and partners cooperate with each other, the less they will depend on Washington’s largesse. Washington should want its allies and partners to be as prepared and capable as possible to counter emerging threats, and Indonesia or Poland purchasing new military gadgets from South Korea will only further that goal.
The damage done to U.S. alliances by the Trump administration continues to cast a long shadow, and even the best assurances by the Biden administration may not be enough to prevent other spokes, such as Australia, Japan, and the Philippines, from following South Korea’s lead. But as the case of South Korea shows, having more independent partners does not necessarily lead to less reliable ones—so long as the United States can embrace the benefits of realignment.