South Korea’s burgeoning defense industry would love it if only they could begin inundating Ukraine with items from an inventory ranging from basic infantry weapons to tanks, howitzers, and even missiles and planes.

Already the world’s eighth-largest arms exporter, South Korea is poised to leap into the global top five while constrained by longstanding policy against exporting weapons directly to Ukraine. 

Now that President Putin has signed a new defense agreement with North Korea’s Kim Jong-un, the South, in retaliation, is considering selling arms to Ukraine on the way to becoming “the world’s fourth-largest defense equipment exporter,” the goal set by President Yoon well before the Russian invasion.

In the face of Mr. Putin’s warnings not to rush to the aid of the war-ravaged country, South Korea’s national security adviser, Chang Ho-jin, has told South Korean reporters  the South would “reconsider the issue of arms support to Ukraine” — with “specific measures: to be revealed later.”

Analysts believe South Korea would be reluctant to announce an abrupt shift in policy for fear of needlessly antagonizing Russia while deepening the worsening confrontation with North Korea, but South Korea’s defense industry is already renowned for producing basic weapons for markets worldwide.

For now, the South is playing coy about what it’s got in mind for Ukraine. South Korea’s Yonhap News quoted an official as saying “it will be interesting to see how Russia responds, rather than revealing our plans in advance.”

The prospect of the South entering the fray as an arms exporter raises the specter of a contest between South and North Korean arms on foreign soil  — and a dress rehearsal for hostilities across the demilitarized zone that’s divided the Korean  peninsula since the Korean War ended in a highly armed truce nearly 71 years ago.

The State Department estimates that North Korea has so far exported approximately three million artillery shells to Russia for the war in Ukraine. The war has provided the chance to test other North Korean weapons, including short-range missiles. The South has shipped artillery shells for the Americans, who  in turn ship them to Ukraine.

 In general South Korea’s defense industry is  believed to be far superior to that of the North.  “The government has indeed achieved some brag-worthy successes through defense exports,” said a research fellow at the Sasakawa Research Foundation, Shinae Lee. 

Mr.  Yoon’s national security strategy “celebrates South Korea as ‘a defense industry powerhouse,” she wrote, with defense exports of about $14 billion last year.  South Korea, according to the report, exported arms to a dozen countries in 2023 ranging from Australia to Southeast Asia to the Middle East and Europe.

For this year, it said,  the government “has ambitiously set its sights on achieving $20 billion in arms exports” reflecting “South Korea’s growing stature in the global defense market” and “its strategic vision of playing a more influential role on the international stage in cooperation with like-minded countries.”

Without shipping directly to Ukraine, South Korean companies are profiting from the war. “As the Ukraine war creates a global shortage of artillery shells,” according to Steven Borowiec, writing for Nikkei Asia, “South Korean companies have seen orders rise to replace inventories shipped to Kyiv.”

A senior analyst at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, Euan Graham, told Nikkei that “South Korean companies have carved out a niche where they’re providing materials that are not necessarily at the highest end technologically, but at a more affordable price.”

South Korea “has an industrial infrastructure whereby it can quickly provide arms to countries that need them,” Mr. Graham observed “Buying from Korea is good policy from a value-for-money perspective.”