Anti-Korean, far-right Japanese magazine urges Tokyo to learn from Seoul’s defense industry growth

K9 howitzers take part in an artillery drill held near the Northern Limit Line (NLL) on June 25, 2025. [NEWS1]

 

A Japanese conservative monthly known for anti-Korean coverage is now telling its readers to “learn from South Korea,” holding up South Korea’s defense industry as a model for Japan’s weapons export push. 

 

Monthly Hanada used its June issue to argue that South Korea, once dismissed in Japan’s right-wing press, has become a benchmark in an area Tokyo can no longer afford to ignore.

 


 

Writing in the June issue, security expert Kohtaro Ito credited South Korea’s rise as an arms exporter to three factors: testing in combat, simplicity and training support, and an “All Korea” sales strategy in which the presidency, military and diplomats all move together. 

 

The piece comes as Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s government takes a more aggressive approach to promoting Japanese defense exports.

 

Ito is a senior research fellow at The Canon Institute for Global Studies and previously worked at Japan’s National Security Secretariat under former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. 

 

He wrote that Korea had already exported more than 1 trillion yen ($6.4 billion) worth of defense equipment as of 2022 and had become one of the world’s top 10 arms exporters. 

 

A surface-to-air missile is fired from a Cheongung-II air defense system during live-fire drills in an unspecified western coastal area in 2024. [YONHAP]

 

“Some people in Japan react as if that cannot possibly be true because of anti-Korean sentiment or the preconception that Korean technology is inferior,” Ito wrote. “But the track record and combat experience of South Korean-made weapons are already at a level that is difficult to ignore.”

 

Ito said the biggest strength of South Korea’s defense industry is combat experience, citing the K9 self-propelled howitzer and the Cheongung-II mid-range surface-to-air missile system as representative examples. 

 

He wrote that the K9 gained global attention after North Korea’s shelling of Yeonpyeong Island in 2010. 

 

“Two of the four self-propelled guns were put out of action by the North Korean surprise attack, but the other two accurately struck North Korean positions,” Ito wrote. 

 

“In Japan, some mocked it by saying only half of them were useful, but in fact it proved the weapon was usable in real combat, and even cases in which it became unusable were turned into feedback for product improvement.” He added that Cheongung-II’s reported interception of an Iranian missile in the United Arab Emirates would also be “a major sales point.”

 

The Hyundai Rotem K2 MBT [HYUNDAI ROTEM]

 

Another strength, Ito argued, is ease of operation. 

 

“If you want even young people who serve only about two years to be used as an immediate fighting force, then the way weapons are operated also must be simplified as much as possible,” he said.  

 

“Weapons built this way also match the needs of other countries with conscription, such as Finland.” 

 

He said South Korea earned praise when it exported the K9 to Finland by dispatching personnel to provide operating guidance in temperatures of minus 30 degrees Celsius (minus 22 degrees Fahrenheit) and by responding quickly on-site when breakdowns or parts-replacement issues arose.

 

The third advantage, he wrote, is an “All Korea” approach to sales. 

 

The Japanese researcher pointed out how South Korean presidents personally promote exports through summit diplomacy, how defense attachés at embassies gather information on local exhibitions and how the government links military exchanges, training and equipment sales into a single coordinated strategy. 

 

As an example, he cited the Lee Myung-bak administration’s export of nuclear power plants to the United Arab Emirates, saying South Korea stationed 100 elite troops there under the pretext of security training. “If South Korean equipment is judged to be easy to use in that process, it leads to sales,” he wrote.

 

Ito also contrasted the politics of defense exports in Japan and South Korea.

 

“There is an image [in Japan] that conservatives try to push military and security issues forward while the left puts on the brakes,” he wrote. “By contrast, even left-leaning governments in South Korea increase defense spending and actively sell weapons.”

 

Ito also pointed to South Korea’s long and often risky weapons-development ambitions as fueling the growth of the country’s defense industry.  

 

He noted that the Park Chung Hee government secretly pursued nuclear development without Washington’s knowledge and succeeded in developing ballistic missiles through reverse engineering before the effort was discovered by the United States and halted. 

 

He also cited South Korea’s outreach to Russia in the early 2000s to acquire anti-air missile technology and vertical launch systems. 

 

The June Issue of Monthly Hanada, in which security expert Kohtaro Ito argued that Japan should take lessons from Korea in promoting its own defense exports. [JOONGANG ILBO]

 

“South Korea was able to create products that could be exported because it kept developing and producing them, taking risks and not stopping even after failures,” Ito wrote. 

 

“It was pushed forward by the urgency of being stuck in an armistice with North Korea.”

 

Monthly Hanada’s decision to run such an article reflects the broader shift underway in Japan, where the current administration is seeking to actively export weapons. 

 

Japan recently scrapped the restriction that only allowed the export of rescue, transport, warning, surveillance and minesweeping military equipment. 

 

Ito argued that Japan already has the basic foundation to develop and produce defense equipment and should expand exports step by step rather than trying to do too much at once. 

 

“Korea-Japan cooperation in defense equipment production could also become an option,” he added. 

 

This article was originally written in Korean and translated by a bilingual reporter with the help of generative AI tools. It was then edited by a native English-speaking editor. All AI-assisted translations are reviewed and refined by our newsroom.

BY YOO SEONG-WOON [[email protected]]