How South Korea’s Weapons Industry Began

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In 1968, the Republic of Korea  was totally dependent on firearm   and ammunition imports from the United States. South Korean firms only produced  uniforms and related goods,   not rifles, mortars, grenades or ammunition. The South Korean army still used vintage  American M-1 rifles left over from World   War II. Their total stock of ammunition  was estimated to last just three days.

So when the United States announced a plan  to maybe withdraw all of its troops from   the Korean peninsula by 1975, the  South Koreans went on high alert. In just a few years, they needed  to build a domestic defense and   military arms industry. Starting  from almost literally nothing. They did it. In this video, we  look at how South Korea founded   what is today one of the world's  biggest military arms industries. ## Beginnings Basically since its creation, South Korea  relied upon the United States for its defense. The United Nations - led by the United  States - went to war for South Korea   in the early 1950s. After the war,  American troops stationed on South  

Korean soil deterred the North Korean  authorities from resuming hostilities. South Korea's first president - serving  through the war and into the 1950s - was   Syngman Rhee. Elected in 1948, Rhee was a  reliable anti-communist, but also a corrupt   and strong-willed nationalist whose refusal to  bend in certain things frustrated the Americans. In 1960, a then-84 year old Rhee won a fourth  term as President. But election irregularities led  

to a popular uprising, forcing Rhee to flee the  country to the US where he later died in Hawaii. A year of instability and political  squabbling followed. Amidst the chaos,   military general Park Chung-hee seized  power in the May 16 coup. He cracked  

down on the protests and began implementing the  economic reforms that he would be so famous for. Park Chung-hee came to power as a  bit of an enigma. The Americans had   some concerns based on his past associations  with Communism. Ex-president Rhee had earlier   arrested him and sentenced him to death  for supposedly leading a Communist cell.

But the Americans came around on Park especially  after he dispatched South Korean troops to Vietnam   in 1965. That same year, he also resumed relations  with Japan - another major American ally. ## Rising North Korean Aggression Early on, the North Koreans thought Park  Chung-hee would crumble from domestic   instability. Which considering how he  came to power, was not unreasonable. But that failed to happen. And by 1966,  it was clear that the successes of   Park's first Five-Year Economic Plan  quieted opposition to his authority.

Such success also drew unfavorable comparisons to   the DPRK's own Seven-Year Plan, which  was then falling far short of goal. The North Korean government decided to go  on the offense to stir up domestic unrest,   disrupt South Korea's ongoing economic reforms,   and give the Americans - then embroiled  in the Vietnam War - new headaches. In 1966, there were 13 recorded North  Korean armed infiltrations into South   Korea. The year after that, 1967, that leapt  to 121. The year after that was even worse. Very famously, in January 1968,  the DPRK sent 31 commandos to   the Blue House - home of the South  Korean President - in an attempted   assassination. It resulted in the loss  of 26 South Koreans and 4 Americans. Two days later, the North Koreans captured  the USS Pueblo, an American intelligence ship,   and its crew. This was a major  Cold War incident that threatened   to drag the Americans into another war in Asia.

Then in late October, the North Koreans  sent 120 armed commandos to set up guerrilla   camps in the sparsely populated Gangwon  Province. They had thought the farmers   there would be amenable to uniting  with North Korea to topple Park. It   took 70,000 counter-guerrillas  two months to root them out. 1968 saw 217 armed infiltrations into the South,   bringing the two Koreas to the brink of war  once again. But the Americans insisted on  

diplomacy to solve the Pueblo crisis and refused  forceful retaliation for the Blue House crisis. This restraint continued even after April  15th 1969, when a North Korean airplane shot   down an American reconnaissance  plane - killing all 31 onboard. To Park and his team, the Americans' commitment  to their defense no longer seemed as surefire. ## Nixon's Remarks During a thirteen-day long trip  around the world in July 1969,   Nixon stopped at the American territory of Guam.

The United States was then bedeviled  by the seemingly never-ending Vietnam   War. This two decade long, deeply  divisive saga that eventually cost   the lives of 30,000 Americans and  hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese. During his presidential campaign in 1968,  Nixon pledged "an honorable end to the war   in Vietnam". A year later in 1969, that  honorable end still seemed far away. Asia's various leaders wanted to know Nixon's  thoughts on American future involvement in Asia,   considering the Vietnam War's  then-deep unpopularity with the   voting public. So Dick gave some prepared remarks. Those remarks were not all  that unconventional. China,   North Korea, and North Vietnam remained long-term  threats to peace. The United States will stand by  

its treaty commitments, but will also try  to avoid another conflict like Vietnam. Reporters pressed him on that last bit. Asked  what might happen if another situation like   Vietnam came up, he said that it would  be handled case-by-case. Then he added: > I recall in 1964 some advice that I got  from Ayub Khan ... of Pakistan ... He said:  

"The role of the United States in ... any of  those countries which have internal subversion   is to help them fight the war  but not fight the war for them." > Now, that, of course, is  a good general principle,   one which we would hope would be our  policy generally throughout the world. It was clear that Nixon was speaking off the cuff,   but the press saw his remarks as a policy,  calling it the "Guam Doctrine" at first.

Later in November 1969, Nixon made a  speech re-emphasizing this direction,   turning the "Guam Doctrine"  into the "Nixon Doctrine". ## The Nixon Doctrine The Nixon Doctrine told the world that the United   States will continue to fulfill its  existing treaty obligations in Asia. Yet it also acknowledged that America  cannot police the world. The growing  

anti-war movement caused policymakers to  rethink the costs of anti-communism even   when hit with provocations  like the Pueblo incident. In March 1969, the Soviets and Chinese  fought a undeclared battle at Zhenbao   Island. Nixon thought that the growing  Sino-Soviet Split presented an opportunity   to warm relations with the Chinese and  de-escalate American commitments in Asia.

So the idea came down to this: Asian countries  should be able to defend themselves on their own,   without as much intervention from the United  States. Asia for Asian hands, so it went. The Nixon Doctrine did not all that  differ from previous administrations.   But Park and his administration had  long suspected that the Americans   might pull their troops from Korean  soil. They hoped that sending their   own military forces to Vietnam alongside  the Americans would help stave that off. But a withdrawal seemed imminent. And  indeed in November 1969, Nixon asked   National Security Advisor Dr. Henry Kissinger  for a plan to halve the troop numbers in Korea.

By now, Park Chung-hee had soured  on wagering his administration's   security on the outcome of big-power diplomacy  games. At his New Year's Message on January 1,   1970, he began stressing the  importance of self-reliance. ## Withdrawal In March 1970, the US Ambassador in Seoul announced a plan to withdraw  20,000 American troops from Korea. This came as a major shock to Park  Chung-hee, who had hoped for more   time to build up the economy first  - a task judged to be done by 1975.

August 1970, Vice President Spiro Agnew went to   Korea and told Park about the necessity  of reducing American defense spending. Park agreed to the withdrawal, but  wanted aid to modernize his army.   After a heated debate, the  US agreed to $1.5 billion. Agnew also apparently assured Park  that the US would not withdraw any   more troops than the 20,000. But then a  few weeks later during a trip to Taiwan,   he told the press that a total  withdrawal was possible within five   years. A complete contradiction  of what he told Park earlier.

## Behind Internally, the Americans believed that Park  Chung-hee was exaggerating his weakness. The Nixon administration estimated that Park's  military already could repel an unilateral North   Korean attack - assuming the North Koreans were  not supported by either the Chinese or Soviets. Yet there were things to be concerned about.  The DPRK had a massive head start on their own   domestic capacity build up - having started years  earlier after the Soviets withdrew military aid   when the DPRK choose to side with the  Chinese during the Sino-Soviet Split. At the start of the 1970s, the North Koreans'  military strength outclassed the South Koreans   - with twice as many ground vehicles, aircraft,  and four times the maritime boats. They also spent  

about 14 to 30% of their GNP on defense, while  South Korea only 4.3% and 4.4% in 1970 and 1971. ## Homeland Reserve Efforts to start closing the  gap got off to a slow start. Back in 1968, just a few weeks after  the Pueblo incident, Park created   the Homeland Reserve Forces or today, the  Republic of Korea Reserve Forces (향토 예비군).

The idea was to arm civilians in the  villages, towns and cities to defend   themselves against North Korean infiltration.  The arms would be produced domestically. With   over 2.5 million enrolled in the reserve  forces, such production was necessary. But it was taking forever to get those  arms made. Three years earlier in 1965,  

when negotiating the deployment  of Korean troops to Vietnam,   the Americans initially agreed to help the  Koreans produce the M-16 rifle domestically. But the US Congress undercut this  commitment by imposing restrictions   on arms technology exports.  They thought that the South   Koreans having M16s would cause them  to unilaterally trigger another war. Only after Park announced that it  would "bid in the world market"   that an agreement finally came together  for a plant for the M-16 rifle. I suppose   Americans arms dealers realized they might  actually lose those sales. This was built   as a joint venture between the Koreans and  Colt Industries, the rifle's patent-holder.

You can sense the Koreans' frustration.  The United States wanted them to shoulder   more of the defense burden. Yet  the Americans were also actively   impeding the Koreans from acquiring the  weapons needed for said shouldering. ## Failure of the Four Core Projects Park Chung-hee had spent time in Japan, and  was a student of Meiji Japan's modernization. His experiences there taught him that  the strengthening of the military was   tied to that of the economy. A powerful  military cannot be achieved without a   powerful industrial base behind  it. That base began with steel.

In 1968, Park Chung-hee secured reparation  funds from Japan to found a steel-making   company called Pohang Iron & Steel  Company, better known today as POSCO. In early 1970, Park Chung-hee ordered his  economic planners to build up what he believed   to be other major foundations for an indigenous  defense industry - the Four Core Factories.   So in addition to POSCO, factories for heavy  machinery, steel, shipbuilding, and pig iron. Park also issued Order 5267 to set up a new,  independent agency for domestic weapons R&D:   the Agency of Defense Development  or ADD (국방과학연구소). The ADD and its  

169 personnel would do the  R&D to create new weapons. Unfortunately, several problems came  up. the Korean government could not get   the foreign loans to fund the Four  Core Factories. Japanese investors   suspected the project's potential  military applications and did not   want to irk their American patrons.  Same with the Europeans and others. Time was running short. In March 1971,  20,000 troops left Korea. Critically,  

the American 7th Division withdrew from the  Korean Demilitarized Zone or DMZ. For the   first time since the end of the Korean War, the  ROK was guarding the 155-mile line on their own. In November 1971, the Economic  Planning Bureau briefed President   Park that the four factories could not  be completed. With four years left,   Park Chung-hee found himself at a bit of  odds. And then something unexpected happened.

## Oh Won-chol Following the depressing November 1971 briefing,  a guy named Oh Won-chol, then the Assistant Deputy   Minister of Commerce and Industry, approached  Park's chief of staff to share a plan. If everything goes well, Oh claimed,  then all the necessary rifles, grenades,   mortars and mines would be produced in six  months without needing any foreign loans. This led to an intense four-hour presentation   to the President himself. The key point  was the elegant weaving together of the   military with other civilian industries  like iron, steel, or heavy chemicals.

The Koreans' thinking at the time was to build  separate, specialized military factories - owned   by the state - for each military item. Just  like the M-16 rifle factory Korea and the US   were then in the process of building. It was also  akin to the approach of the DPRK or the Soviets. Oh saw this as wasteful and expensive,  and thus proposed that desired military   weapons be broken down into individual parts  and reverse-engineered. Those parts would   then be reproduced by civilian factories, and  then assembled under the purview of the ADD. Simply speaking, Oh advocated to lean on the  civilian industry to rapidly build up South   Korean indigenous defense capacity. Turn  the whole economy into a dual-use system. Oh also pointed out that the civilian  industry can benefit from the military's   stringent requirements. For instance, the need  for higher precision steel tools - as tight as 10  

micrometers - will upscale the steel industry's  precision skills and train more workers. As I mentioned earlier, Park Chung-hee  long believed that the strengthening of   the military and economy had to happen side by  side. So it is no surprise that he bought in. Thusly, Park promoted Oh to be directly  under his purview as the Second Senior   Economic Secretary - an unprecedented promotion  - and then gave the ADD its first major task.

## Lightning Project The ADD and its scientists were to lead the  emergency nationalization of the production   of several "basic weapons" like rifles,  machine guns, grenades, and landmines. The President wanted to see prototypes  for all those by the end of December 1971,   so 40 days. For this reason, the project was  named the "Lightning Project", or Beongae. Interviewed later, the 10 lead members of  the team remember nearly being in despair   at the task. But then they decided  to just get started. Even if they  

don't succeed in everything,  they can get something done. So they worked around the clock on old  American weapons like the M15 anti-tank mine,   M1919 Browning machine gun, 3.5 inch bazooka  or M1 carbine. Each weapon was taken apart,   with every component measured and  copied to assemble a blueprint.

Impressively, the team finished ahead of the  deadline and the first prototypes were fired.   Some items like the bazookas fired fine.  However, the barrels of the rifles and   machine guns exploded - an indication of  their poor quality and lack of precision.

The ADD team went back to the drawing board,  while simultaneously adding several products   like personal firearms and communications  devices. Meanwhile, mass production was   scheduled and set up - with military factories  only doing final assembly and qualification. As this was happening, Park Chung-hee was  gathering force for an all out push. After winning   a close election against democracy advocate Kim  Dae-jung, Park in December 1971 declared a state   of emergency - suspending the Constitution and  dissolving the legislature. These powers helped  

him mobilize the nation's resources like as if  it it were in war, but received great criticism. Kim was one such critic. Two years later, the  Korean CIA kidnapped Kim from a Tokyo hotel   and put him on a boat with weights on his legs  - apparently to be dumped out at sea. Only stern   intervention by US ambassador Philip Habib  kept Kim alive. Wow, that really happened. Anyway. Park Chung-hee himself attended  the second test firing in April 1972. The  

progress was sufficiently alarming to the  Americans that they sent over a technical   team to Korea - both to provide "guidance" and  also to keep low-key tabs on their progress. ## Polar Bear The success that the ADD had with basic weapons  inspired Park Chung-hee to push them further. He had seen the effectiveness of next-generation,   more precision-guided products like ballistic  missiles during the 1971 Indo-Pakistan War. Park soon grew concerned about his military's  ability to hit Pyongyang - some 160 kilometers   away from the DMZ - using only aerial  bombers. With Seoul so close to the DMZ,   Seoul can be destroyed with Pyongyang  untouched before the Americans can arrive. A lightning victory just like  the 1971 Indo-Pakistan war,   which ended in less than 2 weeks.

After murmuring about how South Korea should have  moved its capital down to Daejeon after the Korean   War, he ordered Oh and the ADD to make a ballistic  missile with 200 kilometers of range by 1975. The team - led by ADD researcher and MIT grad  Lee Kyung-seo - worked under heavy secrecy,   knowing that the US would not  approve. His boss, Oh Won-chol,   thought that they should first build an  intermediate-range rocket to build competence. Lee disagreed. He wanted to right  away start on the longer range   rocket by first reverse-engineering  a few Nike Hercules surface-to-air   missiles they had access to. Park  ended up siding with Lee's plan.

The ADD contracted the Nike-Hercules' maker  McDonnell Douglas to develop an improved   missile. Ten ADD people were assigned to work  alongside the McDonnell Douglas people during   the planning stage. They took detailed notes which  they shared with their cohorts. The inadvertent   technology transfer was so successful the  ADD canceled the rest of the contract.

At some point, 1976 or so, the Americans  again got wind of their progress and again   offered technical assistance if the Koreans  promised to limit their missiles' range to   only Pyongyang. And of course, the assistance team  kept covert tabs on what the Koreans were doing. The Korea-1 or NHK-1 Polar Bear (Baekgom, 백곰)  missile first fired in 1978. The accomplishment   of such a complex weapon in less than a decade  was an astounding national achievement. As a   reward, Park personally donated 60 million won  to build a swimming pool for the ADD staff. The South Koreans also initiated their nuclear  weapons program in the early 1970s. In this,  

they were ultimately unsuccessful - the  US nixed an attempt to import dual-use   technologies from Canada or France -  but it is not too much to think that   the Polar Bear would have been helpful for that. ## HCIP One of Oh's key points had been  that a domestic military cannot   be achieved without a powerful industrial base. In October 1972, Park deepened his  personal powers, which gave him the   presidency for life plus the power  to mobilize the economy like the   Japanese war economy during the 1930s -  merging the public and private together. A few months later, Park announced the  Heavy Chemical and Industry Plan or HCIP.   Prior to the HCIP, so during the 1960s,  the Korean economy relied on exports,   but across a broad range of industries. Up to 38  different incentive structures were available.

The HCIP harnessed the President's power  to funnel all those incentives into what   was called the Heavy Industry and Chemical  industries. And that comprised of six sectors: Steel, special non-ferrous metals, ships,  machinery, electronics, and petrochemicals. On the surface, the HCIP looked like  a civilian plan to build the economy.   And indeed, Park publicly announced economically  beneficial goals of $10 billion in annual exports   and raising the per capita GDP to $1,000 by 1980. Beneath the surface however, the HCIP's primary  objectives were to build up the country's   potential military-industrial capacity. The six  sectors were chosen not because they were cool,  

but because they had dual-use applications  for military production and development. Steel as a basic feedstock for everything; Heavy machinery, for jets, military  vehicles, or heavy artillery; Ships, for warships and subs; Petrochemicals, for gunpowder, grenades and bombs; Special non-ferrous metals, for ammo; Electronics for reconnaissance tools  and military communications devices; This discretion was chosen so as to not  alarm the American investors providing   the foreign currency for this investment drive. And the North Koreans too. In May 1972,  Park Chung-hee sent a delegation to meet   with Kim Il-sung's people. And  to the shock of the Americans,  

the two made a joint statement in  July about Korean reunification. ## Chaebol With the HCIP, Park directed  his commercial banks to issue   immense amount of credit loans  to build factories and capacity. Civilian factories were not allowed to have  military be more than 30% of their production   during peacetime, giving them ability  to scale up to 100% if war broke out. Famously, development drove through a circle  of favored conglomerates or chaebol. Park had   no particular love for them. Many had been  collaborators and opportunists during the  

colonial period. However, he realized that their  efficiency, huge scale, financial wherewithal, and   compliant management made them his best partners  to drive the capacity buildup of his military. So he turned the Chaebol into military  contractors. The ADD worked with Kia   Heavy Industries to produce howitzers  and mortars. Hyundai made tanks. Kia  

Motors cranked out jeeps in 1977.  Daewoo Shipbuilding built ships. And   Daewoo Precision took over the old  M16 coproduction plant. And so on. Military spending and advancement spilled over  into the civilian sector - with Hyundai, Kia,   Samsung, and Daewoo benefiting  the most. During this decade,   the Hyundai chaebol seized the Korean automotive  industry and built up the massive Ulsan Shipyard. In 1974, the Americans - again seeing  the potential threat to their own arms   sales to Korea - allowed for joint  ventures and technology transfers   between American and Korean defense contractors.

Shortly after, the Koreans began discretely  exporting their excess production - starting first   with non-lethal items, and later moving into small  arms and ammunition. By 1977, South Korea was   exporting over $100 million of arms, making them  one of the Third World's leading arms exporters. ## Conclusion South Korea's enmeshment of the civilian  and military industries hints at one   of the key benefits of a massive  industrial base - you can turn them   into weapons factories if the time ever comes. Korea saw massive economic growth  through the 1970s. Exports expanded  

at 32% a year between 1972 and  1976. The $10 billion export   goal was reached a few years early in  1977. GNP grew at an average of 10%. But Park Chung-hee's successes in the  economy and military came with immense   controversy. His authoritarian rule and  oppression of people's freedoms - which   he saw as justified as North Korean  aggressions continued throughout   the 1970s - made him a difficult  partner and tiresome to live under. In 1978, the same year the country  first launched its indigenous missiles,   the government's elections - though rigged  - showed less popular support than ever. Relations with the US were just as toxic. To add  to the human rights scandals, we had Koreagate.  

In 1976, it came out that a Korean agent  had bribed Washington officials to try   and reverse continued troop  withdrawals. Two years later,   there were four Congressional  investigations into Korean actions. By the time of his assassination in  1979, Park Chung-hee had built his   country into a powerful economic and  military force, but was less popular   than ever inside and out of it. I wonder  what might have happened had he lived.

2024-10-15

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