CHANGWON, South Korea (AFP) — At the outskirts of a South Korean industrial city, workers at a sprawling weapons factory were conducting final-stage testing for a newly built surface-to-air defense system that could, eventually, head to Ukraine.
Longstanding domestic policy bars Seoul from sending weapons into active conflict zones, but ever since its spy agency accused the nuclear-armed North last month of sending thousands of soldiers to help Moscow fight Kyiv, South Korea has warned it might change course.
If so, likely top of the list for Ukraine would be the “Cheongung” — or Sky Arrow — air defense system, a domestically-produced Iron Dome-style interception shield that Agence France-Presse (AFP) saw Thursday during an exclusive tour of the Hanwha Aerospace factory in the southern city of Changwon.
As the melody of Beethoven’s Fur Elise played on repeat over the in-house speaker, veteran welders worked on huge cylinders that will become part of the interceptor system, which is defensive in nature — although Hanwha also produces an attack-focused variant.
“The Cheongung system can be thought of as similar to the US Patriot missile system,” said senior manager Jung Sung-young at Hanwha Aerospace, South Korea’s largest defense contractor.
Ukraine is reliant on Western air defense systems, particularly Patriots, to protect itself from Russian missile barrages — and has been calling for more deliveries.
Washington said in June it would prioritize deliveries to Kyiv, ahead of other countries that have placed orders.
But were South Korea, which remains technically at war with the nuclear-armed North and has maintained production of weaponry long ignored by Western arms industries, to get involved, it could potentially make a huge difference, experts say.
“As a divided nation, we have systematically established and implemented standards at the national level, from the development of these weapon systems to quality control,” said Jung.
“The quality, capability and manufacturing supply chain of our products is sufficiently competitive compared to those of other countries,” he added.
Whether — or how — South Korea decides to help Ukraine directly depends on “the level of North Korean involvement,” President Yoon Suk Yeol said earlier this month, adding Seoul was “not ruling out the possibility of providing weapons.”
If South Korea were to supply arms, the initial batch would be defensive in nature, Yoon said.
To fend off the steady barrage of missiles that have targeted Ukraine’s energy infrastructure and civilian areas, Kyiv urgently needs more air defenses, Han Kwon-hee of the Korea Association of Defense Industry told AFP.
