South Korea boosts domestic arms industry and eyes becoming major exporter
Stockholm — Faced with constant missile and nuclear threats from its belligerent northern neighbour, South Korea is boosting its arms sales and aims to become a major exporter, a study said on Monday. South Korea’s arms industry accounted for 2.2% of global top 100 producers’ sales in 2016, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) said in a report listing the world’s "top 100" military services. South Korean arms-producing companies’ combined sales totalled $8.4bn the same year with a 20.6% rise in sales compared with 2015, the institute added. "The increasing nuclear weapons capability in North Korea has led to major investments in South Korea," the institutes’s senior researcher, Pieter Wezeman, said. In defiance of repeated international condemnations and sanctions, Pyongyang fired an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) last week, which reached an altitude of 4,475km before splashing into the sea 950km east of its launch site, North Korean state media sa...
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