ABSTRACT
The Republic of Korea (ROK or South Korea) has aggressively pursued a “domestic weapons first” policy going back to the early 1970s and the implementation of the first Yulgok Project, an ambitious program of defense industrialization that was intended to lay down “a basic foundation for a self-defense capability for the 21st century.”1 This indigenization process was initially propelled by the threat from North Korea, and the belief that achieving self-sufficiency in defense procurement was essential to maintaining an adequate defense capability. At the same time, domestic arms production was more than merely achieving “security of supply;” very powerful technonationalist impulses can be detected in South Korea’s defense-industrialization activities over the past several decades. In case of the ROK, defense-industrial technonationalism had three core objectives: first, to strengthen its national political independence by reducing dependency upon foreign sources of arms; second, to aid domestic economic development overall by pursuing armaments production as an import-substitution strategy and as a driver of technology-intensive industrialization; and third (and perhaps most important all), to enhance the nation’s military-political status and raise its profile as an important geopolitical player in Asia.
