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South Korea Armaments
South Korea is an important manufacturer of armaments, both
for domestic use and for export
(see Military Production
, ch. 5).
During the 1960s, South Korea was largely dependent on the United
States to supply its armed forces, but after the elaboration of
President Richard M. Nixon's policy of Vietnamization in the
early 1970s, South Korea began to manufacture many of its own
weapons. These included M-16 rifles, artillery, ammunition,
tanks, other military vehicles, and ships. Aircraft were
assembled under coproduction arrangements with United States
firms. Arms exports, including quartermaster goods, vehicles, and
weaponry, reached nearly US$975 million in 1982 but declined
during the rest of the decade, reaching only US$50 million in
1988. In 1989 Seoul announced that its fledgling aerospace
industry was planning to produce an indigenously designed highperformance jetfighter for its air force within two decades. The
South Korean aerospace industry also developed a Korean Fighters
Program in cooperation with McDonnell Douglas of the United
States, with the goal of "acquiring the capacity to design and
manufacture supersonic jetfighters."
Data as of June 1990
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