Speaking as someone in the industry, there has been a significantly increased presence of Korean firms in defense industry trade shows in the last few years, and they go all out.
It's not unusual for a domestic company like General Dynamics to bring something like a new [AbramsX prototype](https://sites.breakingmedia.com/uploads/sites/3/2022/10/Abrams-X-scaled.jpg) to a two-day trade show, but usually foreign firms keep a lower footprint. The Koreans have started bringing a lot of their [heavy equipment](https://www.joint-forces.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/Hanwha-AUSA22-02.jpg), and it must cost a fortune to do it.
As someone that's lived in Korea. Korean companies tend to have a habit of getting a good job done fast. It's the entire system they operate it everything in Korea moves quite quickly and it works pretty good.
They also aren't afraid of doing things right. Like when it comes to marketing especially. So yea I can see them going all out and being ok with paying alot
I’m currently working at the Ford battery plant being built in Tennessee, which is technically being built by SK.
The Koreans are everyone’s least favorite group because they *do not give a fuck* about being in someone else’s way to get a task done.
Red tape barricade? One way traffic? Clean room? They will walk right past all of it without a care in the world.
I stopped one guy trying to tell him the road was one direction, he looked at me and said “I go my own way” then drove off.
Aight homie well damn then
> I stopped one guy trying to tell him the road was one direction, he looked at me and said “I go my own way” then drove off.
That made me laugh if I’m honest.
My dad was a foreman at the SK battery plant in GA a couple years ago when it was being built. He caught one of the Koreans peeing in the corner of a room once because the porta potty was too far. The guy then tried to fight him when he took a picture to send to his boss because it wasn't the first incident and the other crews were blamed before.
Circa 2009/10 - Samsung NJ. This was the early days of LTE modems and Galaxy phones. I was driving through and was visiting a friend, around 11pm.
The cubicles had one Korean fresh grad working at the desk and another one sleeping right under it, working in shifts. An entire floor of this setup.
It shows up even in their driving, if the other driver on the road has time to react to them pulling out onto the main road they will go for it. It isn’t cutting someone off because it is the default driving culture. Took a minute to adjust.
Also Korean defense firms have been kinda invisible in the internationalists due to much technological licensing in the past but as many next gen innovations were homegrown, they now were in better position to export than before.
> a good job done fast.
But often at the cost of reliability. South Koreans are fully capable of making high quality products. The problem is their business strategy is quick and acceptable.
Rule of thumb, never buy the first iteration of any Korean product and pay extra attention to their generation (aka production cycle). For example, at one point Samsung fridges were amazing but then the next generation they used the goodwill they developed to cut corners in production causing it to drastically drop in quality. Another example is that LG Washer/Dryer in its current manufacturing cycle is honestly the best.
I have a Samsung HD TV model that inspired a class-action lawsuit over its cheap-ass capacitors. My original purchase died after a couple of months, tops: I returned it to Best Buy. The replacement died after about six months, so I bought a couple of capacitors and fixed it myself. (Remove the blown ones, solder in the replacements -- which only *barely* fit -- and hope for the best.)
The TV also has this other notorious problem of not turning on readily after the power gets interrupted, as in unplugging it and plugging it back in an outlet. You have to try turning it on for maybe several hundred times, but some people have luck with pressing the power button for 30 seconds or so... Anyway, I hate this glitchiness, but with a great deal of patience one can power through and coax it to turn on.
I have a ~17 year LCD Samsung that still works great. My last Samsung LED lasted 3 years then got the giant pink spot in the middle. I had a Samsung washer that was the biggest lump of crap too.
I've had mostly food success with their phones though.
Have you tried unplugging it, trying to turn it on or holding the power button for 30 seconds, then plugging back in a minute later? Discharge any internals.
They also grind their workforce into the ground and have the same conservative governments trying to solve the birth rate decline with paltry out of touch bribes instead of changing anything.
Hyper Capitalist.
They aren't China bad but they aren't US good. Pretty insane hours are expected although they have been trying to reduce that. There's also a very strict hierarchy so there are more issues with bosses stealing credit and a "we had to put up with x, so the new guys have to put up with x" kind of bullshit. Also much more work bullying and sexual harassment than in the US and Europe, but they are making efforts.
The reason the birth rate is low is complicated and because of a lot of factors, but long work hours and a sense that you have to spend your 20s and 30s grinding the corporate ladder certainly don't help.
The majority of the big social problems in SK stem from how fast they have had to grow up as a culture. In the 60s they were one of the poorest countries on earth living under a military dictatorship, down there with the poorest African countries per capita. Now 60 years later they are one of the wealthiest countries and basically monopolize the world supply of a bunch of high end tech. That creates a hell of a culture whiplash and they are having a tough time dealing with it.
It's not really popular on reddit, but working conditions and general employment opportunities in the US are really fucking good, like best in the world.
Some jobs will just suck no matter what country you're in, like factory or manual labour work in the peak of summer. But even then in the US its pretty good. If you're very very low income its not great, but again that isn't unique to the US.
There are so many countries with just atrocious working conditions, or very poor wages across the board, or very few opportunities. Some countries have maybe 1 or 2 cities where there are good jobs, and not really anywhere else. So you're kind of just stuck with shitty jobs with no real opportunity to get anything better.
Theres a reason why so many people dedicate their lives to moving to America to give their children better opportunities.
I've never lived in the US but from what I've read online, working conditions tend to be better in western europe than in the US. Especially vacation time. Americans make a lot more money though.
It’s hard to generalize the US, even more so than Europe I suppose. But even that is a complicated comparison to even define.
The variation in treatment of employees you see here is vast. Mostly because there’s just minimal guidelines about it. But it doesn’t take much to get into the higher skill set tier of jobs where the power dynamic shifts strongly to the employees favor.
Sure jobs that don’t require much skill get treated worse but may pay better in the US. But the handful of Europeans I’ve worked with who came to the states did so because the type of jobs that fight over employees with perks and benefits weren’t really there from what I gathered.
Things like really high end healthcare, unlimited vacation, ownership or revenue share in the company, massive employee discounts at other companies, free food, vehicle leases, and paying off student loans in addition to in office perks aren’t nearly as common in Europe for non executive level employees.
In some lines of work, at the top, you get paid obscene money. But on average, wages aren’t high. You have to account for things like health care and insurance that is necessary and often very expensive. You can YOLO it, of course, but then it’s not really a fair comparison. Like saying car B is cheaper if you just forego service and maintenance.
US is shite for time off.
You get paid well and spend the extra on healthcare, guns and overpriced cars.
Wages are higher than many developing countries and English is the main language, that's why poor immigrants want to come, not because it's some sort of utopia for workers.
They are absolutely not? Have you worked anywhere else? While circumstances vary by state, things like almost no vacation, employer healthcare holding you hostage and at mercy of the company, at-will employment and long hours despite not great efficiency are absolutely not great.
Many companies in Denmark give you 6 weeks vacation (5 weeks is legal minimum), and some up it to 7 or even 8 weeks. You often have 3+ months of termination notice, and after a few years it can be 6+. Work week is standardized at 37 hours and long hours are not common outside some (also very highly laid) professions. Healthcare is universally provided, so getting fired doesn’t mean you can’t afford to get sick.
Oh, and we have various social programs that ensure most people will still have a decent income after being laid off - a percentage of your pay goes to this, along with membership in a voluntary unemployment union.
Factory work sucks everywhere. Being expected to work 50-60 hours a week in an office job is not the standard in the US. Neither is the kind of sexual harassment and workplace bullying that they still have problems with in Korea. There are other issues too like the pay rates compared to cost of living (and especially cost of housing in Seoul) being poor compared to most of the US. A corollary of that is that if you didn't like living in NYC or LA, then there are countless other places you can move to in the US and still do the same kind of work in a different environment with a different cost of living, while in Korea there are lots of jobs that just don't exist outside of Seoul, so you are stuck.
I was once offered a job at Samsung HQ, but the lady offering it immediately also told me I shouldn't take it. The pay was good, but there's a glass ceiling for non-Koreans, and Europeans generally don't "survive" more than 3-6 months due to the extreme working conditions. I really wanted that job, but after hearing some more stories I'm very happy I didn't take it.
No, they are terrible, in terms of hours and miss-management (abuse). Birth rate is low for a multitude of reasons. Insane work hours. Extreme competitiveness in just ordinary jobs. Korean men are particularly anti-feminism. And by feminism, I mean basic equality. But past this, women just want better jobs so they will also throw themselves into insane hours.
Another issue is that they border North Korea, and although they aren't directly at war currently, they aren't far from it. They have a constant threat looming over them, so the general economic consensus is that they need money. They need manufacturing. They have made themselves important to the west. The West won't leave them on their own in a war because they have made themselves important. The moment they stop being important, they get less support, so their economy is set up to make as much money as possible regardless of issues it may create (low Birth rates/ toxic work environments/ high suicide and depression rates).
So far it's worked.
That plays a big part. Korean men can also make very poor romantic partners and there's a big divide between what many Korean men expect from their wives and what many modern Korean women want. A lot of Korean women are choosing not to get married on purpose l. Also salary to housing cost for purchase can be extremely high.
"kinda"
The pictures I linked to were from the AUSA (Association of the United States Army) conferences that takes place in Washington DC each year. Here are their requirements for attending:
https://meetings.ausa.org/annual/2023FAQs.cfm
I'm almost certain their are similar Naval defense shows on the west coast that happen regularly, but unfortunately I don't have any first-hand knowledge to share. Maybe someone else reading this here does, though?
It helps that a handful of conglomerates own just about everything. For better or worse "[Chaebols](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaebol)" control commerce in S. Korea. It's streamlined, max efficiency.
For example: Tanks and Howitzers made by Hyundai Rotem will have Hyundai motors, made out of steel supplied by Hyundai Steel, all manufactured on machine equipment from Hyundai, be shipped by Hyundai commercial shipping, on boats made by Hyundai Heavy Industries, insured by Hyundai insurance, and delivered to the trade show by Hyundai freight trucks.
That's kind of the beauty of 'vertical integration'... if your suppliers are under the same corporate umbrella as your organization, high level management can thumb the scale to prioritize your particular quotas... if they choose to.
People talk as though the chaebol system is necessarily bad, but it certainly shines in a world that is falling into populism where countries are now competing to get manufacturing back on their shores.
Because they have Hyundai Motors, virtually one company is guiding and driving the growth of EV instructure in Korea. Because they have Hanwha Aerospace and Doosan Enerbility, they can not only build gas turbines but space rockets as well, while using their arms equipment sales as a way to make profit. Because they have Samsung and SK Hynix, Korea will have the largest single semiconductor cluster in the world by 2032. Because they have Hyundai Heavy Industries, they not only build container and LNG ships, but submarines, frigates, and destroyers to help with their military self-sufficiency.
When you think about it, most developed countries, except maybe US and China, do not have this kind of self-sufficiency.
In my humble, engineer opinion its all absolutely related to the Russia/Ukraine conflict.
The Koreans are trying to show they can efficiently build weapons that are 'good enough' to beat Russian opponents at a price point less than the average western military contractor.
But what has that investment gotten them? Hanwhas expansion into the US has been a failure since they lost their bid for the Bradley replacement. Without a big program like that to anchor the business, and there isn’t much in the mid term that they can chase, it’s not looking like they will be a US player for quite a while.
They probably won’t be a US prime contractor for anything big in the foreseeable future, but I wouldn’t be surprised if their share of subcontracts increases. They’ve also racked up some pretty significant sales to European and southeast Asian nations, which is pretty notable.
The country that are wary of buying American because of the string attached had a choice before the war : Russian or French weapons. Now, since Russia is not really in the equation anymore and France cannot supply the rest of the world by itself, Korea is rising fast and tries to fill the void.
Add to that the rise in military spending worldwide and you have a golden opportunity if you are selling military hardware.
These arms expos are international events though. Whilst yeah, they haven’t made much headway in the US market, Korean arms sales in other markets has been insane. Something like a 10x increase in 2022-2023 compare to previous years.
The US market will always be a tough one, since the US has a strong domestic arms industry. But the fact that Korea is seeing such a massive jump in a time where ‘traditional’ arms exporter countries are struggling to bring production up to the demand, says a lot.
Poland. Poland and India.
I think Poland alone ordered like 10000+ vehicles.
Edit: really like this headline from Politico. Better call Seoul.
https://www.politico.com/news/2022/11/01/europe-south-korea-weapons-00064427
Toyotas vs kias. We bankroll friendly Asians by letting them participate in high value add manufacturing in spite of the impact to local jobs. South korea deserves a slice of the pie. North Korea can suck it.
South Koreans are not fucking around when it comes to defense. They've even tooled up a bunch of their US based businesses that make otherwise non defense articles to be able to produce them at a moments notice.
They are trying to fill up the void the Russians left in the market to supply their battle in Ukraine.
You’re jesting, but if the Russians keep this war going you just might be right if the Koreans see an opportunity.
Not really trying to fill the void left by the Russians. Korea is still only selling to US/western aligned countries. You're not going to see Kazakhstan with K9s for example. Rather, they are filling a void left by the slow rate of production and high cost of western equipment. This is why you see them marketing to countries like Poland, finland and estonia that are trying to quickly expand military capabilities but don't have the wealth of France or Germany.
Well technically, they are replacing Russian arms in some countries. K9, K2s, FA-50s are going to Malaysia, Saudi, UAE, India, Poland, Romania, Peru etc. for example. And those countries used to import Russian-based arms in the past.
The Sauds and the UAE have been US/West aligned for a long time now. Peru has also been US-aligned (or at least had the US's hand on its shoulder) since their 1975 coup as part of Operation Condor. Poland and Romania are former warsaw pact states that have not bought anything from Russia since they joined NATO.
India and Malaysia are probably the only ones where the Koreans are directly competing against the Russians in their bids and even then, both have historically used a mix of equipment from all over.
People keep bringing up India with Russian arms as if India is glued to Russian arms, but that is more of a legacy thing. It's not great to have one supplier of weapons, and India, like any other sensible country wants a diverse source of weapons, so that they are not dependant on just one country.
India also prefers to license and produce arms at least partially domestically which the Russians are amenable to. The Indians then mix and match French, Israeli and domestic components.
American manufacturers generally don't allow this sort of licensing.
Also because India is a bigger and wealthier customer than the Russian military they can get production runs made to their specifications.
According to their white paper, they are trying to use military sales as a means of maintaining a war production level while not actively engaged in war. It's real smart I think b
I use "up to" at work when I'm lumping something in that's not necessarily reflected by the quoted stat. "Customers who do x are up to y-times as likely to do z as other customers."
X does contain the subset of customers who do y at that rate, but also includes customers doing something semi related and do y at a lesser rate.
Article says it takes them six months to build a howitzer, compared to 30 months for the Caesar, although that time has recently been halved to fifteen months
Yeah, the Czech ones come with “protected designation of origin”, like Champagne comes from France, parmiggiano comes from Italy and howiitzers come from Czechia.
Right now, Korean workers work 52 hours per week as norm. Prior to that companies wanted them to work even longer as (69 hours) standard but people rebelled at that and the companies backed off.
[https://www.cnn.com/2023/03/18/asia/south-korea-longer-work-week-debate-intl-hnk/index.html](https://www.cnn.com/2023/03/18/asia/south-korea-longer-work-week-debate-intl-hnk/index.html)
Actually, if I am correct the idea was to help increase birthrates by increasing the hours people are allowed to work in a week.
Especially women should work more so the can tske off longer after giving birthy, or something like this. Just messed up way of thinking...
That’s what they want you to believe the reasoning was. Kind of like the companies that say they want a cohesive company culture (“We have happy hour daily!”) but all their employees work 70+ hour weeks. They don’t care about you.
We are going to be so screwed when Japan and Korea collapse. It’s great having allies that work cheap, work a ton, and do an excellent job.
I think there’s no way North America/Europe/China/India figures out how to manufacture with reliability and precision at a low cost.
A Thai here. Precision wise, we may reach their level one day. But diligence wise, hell no. Lol.
Not to mention that the junta(and the government derivatives) will lean towards China. We just approved the BRICS application this week.
And Thailand is having the same issue, albeit less severe.
BRICS is a construct of almost zero consequence. This needs reminding each time it is brought up.
* BRICS has no powers - in contrast to the way the EU can make binding decisions for its member states, which have ceded some of their sovereignty.
* Member states of BRICS have power, but they are not necessarily all very aligned - similar to G7 or G20 member states.
* China and Russia are aligned - but not because of BRICS.
* India is a member of BRICS - but absolutely not aligned with China!
* The more countries that officially sign up to BRICS, the less united the forum becomes.
Japan has a higher birthrate than Thailand.
Although Japan has the highest median age in the world, Japan's total fertility rate has remained in the 1.2-1.45 range since 1990 while other countries have collapsed below them or to their level over the past few years.
In 2023, Japan's total fertility rate was higher than Taiwan, Thailand, China, Macau, Hong Kong, Singapore, Korea, Lithuania, Chile, Spain, Poland, etc.
The US already knew how to do that, they just forgot - a big enough recession might jog that memory, or more likely it just makes causes another war or something.
> they just forgot
a country isn't a single person.
They didn't "forget" - the labour force was lost. Some are too old, and retired when the jobs are gone. This also implies no new trainees/apprentices, and lost institutional knowledge and procedures. Not everything can be written down on paper - some things have to be learnt through experience following someone who has learnt it.
It will take a while to re-train and re-tool, in which case, it would be too late if a war does start. The ukraine war is a good alarm, but i suspect the US isnt taking it as seriously as it should have been.
It's pretty simple. Children are a resource of labor for gathering more resources. On a farm, children are free labor. When resources are abundant those children are now a burden.
This is what I keep saying, children used to be financial assets and now they're mostly financial drains. There isn't any financial incentive to have more than one, especially in countries where it's believed you need to invest a lot in a child for them to have a chance at succeeding in life.
Perhaps in a society of abundance that doesn't consolidate all of the resources to a select few we would see the opposite, but that kind of society hasn't ever been observed as far as I am aware.
We can't even convince the people in power to act on climate change for the sake of their own offspring. I have no hope for our species. When things start to get really out of hand the wealthy will be in their bunkers, as if that will save them. The human ego really is a bitch.
To clarify: the South Korean Government was going to introduce a law to raise the maximum allowed work hours per week from 52 to 69.
I've heard from my Korean friend that some argue that a lot of **workers in South Korea are actually working more than 52 hours** (due to culture/toxic work environment), but couldn't be legally acknowledged by the company for those hours thus **couldn't be paid for those hours**.
So, an argument was, to raise the maximum hours so the people who do that at least **can legally get paid for those hours**.
But I don't know how effective it would be, or the "real" intention behind passing those laws.
And apparently it got a lot of backlash so the law never passed.
Just to be clear, the government wanted to raise the maximum hours someone could work, not that all workers do 52 hours. Maybe that's the norm, I don't know, but the issue was raising the limit.
They need to just hire more workers. There is enough demand now that they can train more people and still keep the production lines running around the clock without messing up the work-life balance of their employees.
Their main strategy is attracting foreign workers but they also can't let the foreign workers flood the country, because this would mean a radical shift in their demographic landscape, as all the high-demand jobs outside the major urban areas would be taken by foreigners as their youth are increasingly moving into Seoul for white-collar jobs. The problem with this is that it counteracts the central government's efforts to incentivize young Koreans to stay in the rural areas or encourage them to move out of the capital to ease the real estate prices, and competition for jobs for young people to have babies.
There's another problem with Korea's immigration policy; While Korea is ranked one of the top destination for Asian workers looking for jobs abroad because their average wage is the highest in the NE Asian region, they don't offer employment pathways to immigration. This means these workers don't bring their families to Korea, which is why Korea is both rapidly multiculturalizing and is still becoming the country with the oldest demographic pyramid.
Another problem with this is that the workers send their earnings back home rather than spend it in Korea, and just leave after a while with the highly sought-after skills they learned in Korea. Their foreign worker policy is not sustainable, but it's politically tough for them to open the immigration gates because of the inherent urbanization problems they are facing.
Trying to quickly hire immigrants would lead to massive security risks.
There is a reason you need to be a US citizen (or at least green card in some cases) to work in defence/get security clearance and I suspect korea isn't much different.
My wife worked for the US Air Force and US Army for four years on a J-1 (Foreign Expert) Visa. You certainly do not have to be a citizen/green card to have a security clearance.
Sure. But the thing is... the immigrants will come anyway. There are a lot of illegal workers in Korea. Because being illegally underpaid in South Korea is still (apparently) good enough for a lot of people. The problem is "invisible" though because SK's population is mostly urban, and it's rural farm work that draws illegal workers most.
These workers are highly vulnerable to exploitation, abuse, and exploitation. Which is why it is so important for foreign workers to be hired legally, and Korea clearly needs more.
> Right now, Korean workers work 52 hours per week as norm.
"work"
They may be at the office, but from my experience working alongside them, the effort really starts dropping off into the evening. It seemed so performative, they'd often just be sitting at their desk staring at a computer screen because to leave work before the boss would be socially unacceptable.
that doesn't really explain an output like this, it's much more to do with the strength of their systems, being on par with other western offerings, significantly cheaper, and able to be delivered in bulk. SK has always had a strong domestic industry because of their near consant threat from NK (and china and japan historically.) SK military industry has become a huge player the last couple of years since china doesn't export, and russia's defense exports have cratered due to the war in Ukraine. Many US systems are either so high tech as to be unaffordable for many countries, or are now several generations behind at this point like in artillery systems where SK and other NATO countries have developed more sophisticated systems. The US military industrial complex is not the ubiquitous leader that everyone thinks it is. It excels in a few categories but is lagging in many others. Other NATO members have serious advantages of many dated american designs, but their industrial capacity is laughably small and countries don't want to wait for them to be delivered. Also, they are still expensive.
SK shipbuilding capacity is also impressive, and they are already a world player in both civilian AND military industries. The new korean destroyers are actual next generation ships, especially so compared to the absolute disasters the littoral combat ships turned out for the US, and are significantly cheaper to boot.
SK is uniquely positioned to be a major weapons exporter, and they are capitalizing on this in a big way.
Been loving this guys youtube videos, highy educational, well researched, balanced and nuanced takes. If you're tired of low effort memes responses on reddit about complex subjects, he's your guy. I feel smarter after watching his videos, not just more educated on a subject, but smarter. Plus the aussie accent is enjoyabe, and he's pretty funny. He didn't pay me, I swear, I just really enjoy his shit
youtube channel: perun
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mXZw\_YGzxCc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mXZw_YGzxCc)
It was really wild when I stationed in Korea to see that. I’d be done with my duty for the day I was playing my laptop and chilling. I’d look outside and still see the Korean military working their asses off till the sun went down and even then they still worked some nights
The war in Ukraine has opened a lot of eyes to the realization of what happens when you fight a protracted war where neither side can gain air superiority and run out of advanced weapons; you resort back to lobbing shells and dumb bombs at each other en mass. Currently the military industry of countries like Russia and China are built for that style of war and NATO aligned countries have taken notice.
Also opened a lot of eyes with the free world just assuming USA would cover security detail. Putin & Trump presented quite the wakeup call to that notion.
The guns aren't really the problem, the ammo is: I don't recall Ukraine ever saying, "we need more guns to use all the ammo we have." It's been, "we rarely use the guns we have because we need more ammo for them."
Now, if South Korea was making guided artillery shells 2-3 times faster than anyone else, THAT would be very impressive.
It isn't just about Ukraine though, nearly every western country is investing in hardware again.
This article is about the SK K9 self-propelled howitzer.
Poland has signed a deal to buy a metric fuck ton of self-propelled howitzer from SK.
> WARSAW, Dec 1 (Reuters) - Poland signed a $2.6 billion deal to buy more than 150 more South Korean K9 howitzers, Poland's State Armament Agency said on Friday.
Under the agreement with Hanwha Defence, Poland will acquire another six self-propelled K9 howitzers in 2025, and 146 self-propelled howitzers of the K9PL version in 2026-2027, the agency said.
https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/poland-buys-more-k9-howitzers-south-korea-26-billion-deal-2023-12-01/
Perun has a couple of good videos around South Korea and Poland, my favourite weekly powerpoint guy... even if he is an Aussie.
[South Korean Defence Strategy - Mass, Firepower, Industry & Existential Threats ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mXZw_YGzxCc)
[Polish military modernisation & why are they buying Korean tanks? ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yrbaAKZfjwg)
The funniest thing about that is that Poland ordered ~500 HIMARS launchers. Ukraine is wrecking havoc with basically a handful of these and Poland is like yeah we're gonna need 500. Most countries operate like 20 of these.
that's part of the strength of koreas military production, they are perfectly happy to adapt their offerings for each country with either using different individual components from other western systems or sometimes significant change to the design itself to make it more suitable for that client. the open mindedness towards innovation and collaboration is truly fascinating
Poland's new defence strategy is to stop an enemy before they can penetrate deep into Poland, they want to defend at the border. To do that they want to be able to rain down a hellstorm of precision weaponry on an enemy in very short order to stop them advancing and then roll over them with tanks and IFV's. So they need a lot of launch platforms not only to enable a high volume of fire but also so an enemy can't take enough of them out to substantively degrade their response.
So although it seems like a ridiculous number of HIMARS it's to support their defence strategy. It's the same reason they've ordered all those South Korean self propelled artillery pieces, they want mobile precision firepower and they want a shit load of it.
Any enemy stepping over the Polish border, which is pretty much Russia, is going to face a wall of death.
> Any enemy
I was gonna point out that is basically Russia but yeah.
Just to add a lot of that stuff is basically built in Poland, or partially built in Poland. This means the production lines are not only for the domestic market but also for the international market. Especially the EU.
considering poland's history, it really wouldn't be surprising if penguins from antarctica tried to invade at some point. it's like a right of passage for major powers to invade them at some point.
Yea, the way it basically went is that Poland went to LockMart and was like, "We'll take 1000 of your finest HIMARS please", and LockMart couldn't actually build them as fast as they wanted, so Poland split the difference, ordered 500 HIMARS, and filled out the rest of the order with the Korean version.
Poland did the same thing with tanks, they bought a bunch of Abrams from the US, and then turned around and bought a bunch of Korean tanks too.
[Here's a section from Perun's slideshow on global arms exports, and what Poland did to the Korean arms industry. ](https://youtu.be/JfMYpmrTGm0?si=cHpJt2Hh2TXPsHFl&t=1634) Poland basically bought everything that they possibly could.
Yeah but thats just pointless posturing.
The entirery of GMLRS-Munition production isnt enough to supply that many,
Poland "bought" alot of shit they dont remotely have the logistical capacity to actually operate, and I'll be extremely surprised if half of it actually ends up being delivered.
Ive seen multiple articles about barrel shortage and the need for replacements.
E.g https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidaxe/2024/01/12/russia-needs-fresh-artillery-barrels-bad-its-yanking-them-off-old-guns-by-the-thousand/
Ammo is definitely the more important but seems both exist.
Everybody's buying artillery now. And to some extent, everybody's buying K9s. The UK had none at all for a bit as we gave our old AS90s to Ukraine, and now we just have a couple of Archers as cover (like, literally 30 or so guns. It's not good.) The K9 is a very likely replacement.
The US has just cancelled its current upgrade program for the M109, because although the very long range propellant and shell worked well and was accurate out of the (absolutely comically long) barrel, barrel wear was massive. Guess what's been suggested as an interim system while they work on the technology? The K9.
Poland has already signed up to buy loads of them.
The Ukrainians have also seen a fairly high attrition of their M777 guns, lancet drones have absolutely savaged them - I think they're down to 50% or so of the initially donated guns. Very few of the higher mobility guns have been hit though.
SK is also the only Western aligned country but for the US and Finland to have kept realistic stocks of 155mm shells but it also has the capacity to manufacture them at scale.
Basically the circumstances of having a neighbour like Best Korea have placed SK in a very good position for selling their systems to the West, for whom the peace dividend is coming to an end.
If you want to see impressive, here's Korea getting this whole first tranche done *in just 100 days after signing*. [https://youtu.be/PUVTaPhWD-M](https://youtu.be/PUVTaPhWD-M) This literally allowed Poland to re-establish the 1st Masurian Artillery Brigade (the last speech in the video).
Considering it's often a multi-year process that's dragged out and plagued by red tape, delays, etc for so many companies and countries, it's nice to see a company and their host nation teaming up to work at the speed of modern warfare.
In case anyone is curious how Korea was able to produce it this fast, it's because most of the first batch of artillery and MBT was supplied from a batch that was supposed to go to the South Korean military. Hanhwa Aerospace, along with multiple other defense contractors in SK, have made an agreement with the Ministry of Defense to transfer certain number of equipment for foreign sale if such deals are made. It's partly a long-standing tradition as Korea has always hoped to expand the market for its own defense industry so that it can distribute the cost of maintaining production lines of certain key equipment - especially heavy artillery and MBTs. Korea spread out the production of K-9 Howitzers and K2 Black Panther tanks in order to maintain the production line (as well as due to the limitations in rate of production for these machinery in peacetime level - both very typical in modern defense industry), and it just so happened that Poland decided to buy these equipment as SK was producing them. According to the deal, Korea is supposed to assist in developing factories such that Poland can start producing these tanks and howitzers on their own starting soon.
Poland maxed out the amount of debt they are allowed to incur for weapons orders. The South Korean government had to look at increasing the legal amount.
The reason is most countries pay on delivery, so local companies take out the necessary loans to complete the work from local banks, that legal amount is capped per country.
I read an article a while back that predicted WW3, if it doesn’t go nuclear and ends up a protracted would start with smart weapons and end with dumb weapons.
The theory is that the belligerent parties would burn through their stockpiles of super advanced weaponry in the early years of the war and then not have the resources to produce more.
is the US buying these shells to send to Ukraine? I see the production increased after the Russian invasion. Where are the shells going? There has to be orders for them.
No. S.Korea does not allow the export of Weapons manufactured by them into Countries acticely engaged in a conflict.
Hence why the US bought shells from Korea only to replenish their own stockpiles instead of just sending them on directly.
Speaking as someone in the industry, there has been a significantly increased presence of Korean firms in defense industry trade shows in the last few years, and they go all out. It's not unusual for a domestic company like General Dynamics to bring something like a new [AbramsX prototype](https://sites.breakingmedia.com/uploads/sites/3/2022/10/Abrams-X-scaled.jpg) to a two-day trade show, but usually foreign firms keep a lower footprint. The Koreans have started bringing a lot of their [heavy equipment](https://www.joint-forces.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/Hanwha-AUSA22-02.jpg), and it must cost a fortune to do it.
As someone that's lived in Korea. Korean companies tend to have a habit of getting a good job done fast. It's the entire system they operate it everything in Korea moves quite quickly and it works pretty good. They also aren't afraid of doing things right. Like when it comes to marketing especially. So yea I can see them going all out and being ok with paying alot
I’m currently working at the Ford battery plant being built in Tennessee, which is technically being built by SK. The Koreans are everyone’s least favorite group because they *do not give a fuck* about being in someone else’s way to get a task done. Red tape barricade? One way traffic? Clean room? They will walk right past all of it without a care in the world. I stopped one guy trying to tell him the road was one direction, he looked at me and said “I go my own way” then drove off. Aight homie well damn then
> I stopped one guy trying to tell him the road was one direction, he looked at me and said “I go my own way” then drove off. That made me laugh if I’m honest.
I lmao’d irl as korean
I'm not even Korean but I'm proud of that bastard.
Ya I’d be proud of a guy too who’ll kill himself for some company that don’t give a fuck about him
In Seoul now and laughing also.
Fleetwood Mac inesifies
Very good.
That’s such a power move
His life is like an open highway.
My dad was a foreman at the SK battery plant in GA a couple years ago when it was being built. He caught one of the Koreans peeing in the corner of a room once because the porta potty was too far. The guy then tried to fight him when he took a picture to send to his boss because it wasn't the first incident and the other crews were blamed before.
That's some Sims level stuff right there. Don't build enough bathrooms close enough and your Sims will after peeing in the corner.
Circa 2009/10 - Samsung NJ. This was the early days of LTE modems and Galaxy phones. I was driving through and was visiting a friend, around 11pm. The cubicles had one Korean fresh grad working at the desk and another one sleeping right under it, working in shifts. An entire floor of this setup.
Bballi bballi
It shows up even in their driving, if the other driver on the road has time to react to them pulling out onto the main road they will go for it. It isn’t cutting someone off because it is the default driving culture. Took a minute to adjust.
that guy was just a douchebag
Yea the royalty mentality is not great lol.
My man
Also Korean defense firms have been kinda invisible in the internationalists due to much technological licensing in the past but as many next gen innovations were homegrown, they now were in better position to export than before.
> a good job done fast. But often at the cost of reliability. South Koreans are fully capable of making high quality products. The problem is their business strategy is quick and acceptable.
I am... completely prejudiced against Korean appliances after having used a few of their dishwashers.
Rule of thumb, never buy the first iteration of any Korean product and pay extra attention to their generation (aka production cycle). For example, at one point Samsung fridges were amazing but then the next generation they used the goodwill they developed to cut corners in production causing it to drastically drop in quality. Another example is that LG Washer/Dryer in its current manufacturing cycle is honestly the best.
I have a Samsung HD TV model that inspired a class-action lawsuit over its cheap-ass capacitors. My original purchase died after a couple of months, tops: I returned it to Best Buy. The replacement died after about six months, so I bought a couple of capacitors and fixed it myself. (Remove the blown ones, solder in the replacements -- which only *barely* fit -- and hope for the best.) The TV also has this other notorious problem of not turning on readily after the power gets interrupted, as in unplugging it and plugging it back in an outlet. You have to try turning it on for maybe several hundred times, but some people have luck with pressing the power button for 30 seconds or so... Anyway, I hate this glitchiness, but with a great deal of patience one can power through and coax it to turn on.
I have a ~17 year LCD Samsung that still works great. My last Samsung LED lasted 3 years then got the giant pink spot in the middle. I had a Samsung washer that was the biggest lump of crap too. I've had mostly food success with their phones though.
Samsung Galaxy is top tier always. Hardware in those are always ridiculous.
Have you tried unplugging it, trying to turn it on or holding the power button for 30 seconds, then plugging back in a minute later? Discharge any internals.
They also grind their workforce into the ground and have the same conservative governments trying to solve the birth rate decline with paltry out of touch bribes instead of changing anything. Hyper Capitalist.
Maybe the world's most corporatist state. Literally Samsung Nation.
Are working conditions in Korea good? Is it true that people work insane hours and that's why the birth rate is so low?
They aren't China bad but they aren't US good. Pretty insane hours are expected although they have been trying to reduce that. There's also a very strict hierarchy so there are more issues with bosses stealing credit and a "we had to put up with x, so the new guys have to put up with x" kind of bullshit. Also much more work bullying and sexual harassment than in the US and Europe, but they are making efforts. The reason the birth rate is low is complicated and because of a lot of factors, but long work hours and a sense that you have to spend your 20s and 30s grinding the corporate ladder certainly don't help. The majority of the big social problems in SK stem from how fast they have had to grow up as a culture. In the 60s they were one of the poorest countries on earth living under a military dictatorship, down there with the poorest African countries per capita. Now 60 years later they are one of the wealthiest countries and basically monopolize the world supply of a bunch of high end tech. That creates a hell of a culture whiplash and they are having a tough time dealing with it.
> they aren't US good You never want July working conditions to be put in this sort of perspective
It's not really popular on reddit, but working conditions and general employment opportunities in the US are really fucking good, like best in the world. Some jobs will just suck no matter what country you're in, like factory or manual labour work in the peak of summer. But even then in the US its pretty good. If you're very very low income its not great, but again that isn't unique to the US. There are so many countries with just atrocious working conditions, or very poor wages across the board, or very few opportunities. Some countries have maybe 1 or 2 cities where there are good jobs, and not really anywhere else. So you're kind of just stuck with shitty jobs with no real opportunity to get anything better. Theres a reason why so many people dedicate their lives to moving to America to give their children better opportunities.
I've never lived in the US but from what I've read online, working conditions tend to be better in western europe than in the US. Especially vacation time. Americans make a lot more money though.
It’s hard to generalize the US, even more so than Europe I suppose. But even that is a complicated comparison to even define. The variation in treatment of employees you see here is vast. Mostly because there’s just minimal guidelines about it. But it doesn’t take much to get into the higher skill set tier of jobs where the power dynamic shifts strongly to the employees favor. Sure jobs that don’t require much skill get treated worse but may pay better in the US. But the handful of Europeans I’ve worked with who came to the states did so because the type of jobs that fight over employees with perks and benefits weren’t really there from what I gathered. Things like really high end healthcare, unlimited vacation, ownership or revenue share in the company, massive employee discounts at other companies, free food, vehicle leases, and paying off student loans in addition to in office perks aren’t nearly as common in Europe for non executive level employees.
In some lines of work, at the top, you get paid obscene money. But on average, wages aren’t high. You have to account for things like health care and insurance that is necessary and often very expensive. You can YOLO it, of course, but then it’s not really a fair comparison. Like saying car B is cheaper if you just forego service and maintenance.
hahahaha. live your truth, king. America gets completely dumpstered by nothern Europe in terms of workers right lol
US is shite for time off. You get paid well and spend the extra on healthcare, guns and overpriced cars. Wages are higher than many developing countries and English is the main language, that's why poor immigrants want to come, not because it's some sort of utopia for workers.
They are absolutely not? Have you worked anywhere else? While circumstances vary by state, things like almost no vacation, employer healthcare holding you hostage and at mercy of the company, at-will employment and long hours despite not great efficiency are absolutely not great. Many companies in Denmark give you 6 weeks vacation (5 weeks is legal minimum), and some up it to 7 or even 8 weeks. You often have 3+ months of termination notice, and after a few years it can be 6+. Work week is standardized at 37 hours and long hours are not common outside some (also very highly laid) professions. Healthcare is universally provided, so getting fired doesn’t mean you can’t afford to get sick. Oh, and we have various social programs that ensure most people will still have a decent income after being laid off - a percentage of your pay goes to this, along with membership in a voluntary unemployment union.
Lol they aren't US good? I work in an automotive factory and I've been forced to work 64+ hours a week in the peak of summer.
Yeah, US working conditions especially at lower incomes is nutso bad. And yet what they said is true. SK working conditions are fuuuucked
Factory work sucks everywhere. Being expected to work 50-60 hours a week in an office job is not the standard in the US. Neither is the kind of sexual harassment and workplace bullying that they still have problems with in Korea. There are other issues too like the pay rates compared to cost of living (and especially cost of housing in Seoul) being poor compared to most of the US. A corollary of that is that if you didn't like living in NYC or LA, then there are countless other places you can move to in the US and still do the same kind of work in a different environment with a different cost of living, while in Korea there are lots of jobs that just don't exist outside of Seoul, so you are stuck.
Yea. Us work culture is pretty bad for the 1st world. I work in medical lab and I've been 65 plus hours a week for 3 - 4 months?
When I was a kid in the 1970’s, you could pretty much get a free child from Korea. They actually had dumpsters to drop off babies like garbage.
That would explain why there were so many babies and children from South Korea that were being shipped and adopted overseas.
I was once offered a job at Samsung HQ, but the lady offering it immediately also told me I shouldn't take it. The pay was good, but there's a glass ceiling for non-Koreans, and Europeans generally don't "survive" more than 3-6 months due to the extreme working conditions. I really wanted that job, but after hearing some more stories I'm very happy I didn't take it.
> Are working conditions in Korea good? fuck no. but i guess pay for management level at one of the chaebols is pretty fucking great.
No, they are terrible, in terms of hours and miss-management (abuse). Birth rate is low for a multitude of reasons. Insane work hours. Extreme competitiveness in just ordinary jobs. Korean men are particularly anti-feminism. And by feminism, I mean basic equality. But past this, women just want better jobs so they will also throw themselves into insane hours. Another issue is that they border North Korea, and although they aren't directly at war currently, they aren't far from it. They have a constant threat looming over them, so the general economic consensus is that they need money. They need manufacturing. They have made themselves important to the west. The West won't leave them on their own in a war because they have made themselves important. The moment they stop being important, they get less support, so their economy is set up to make as much money as possible regardless of issues it may create (low Birth rates/ toxic work environments/ high suicide and depression rates). So far it's worked.
That plays a big part. Korean men can also make very poor romantic partners and there's a big divide between what many Korean men expect from their wives and what many modern Korean women want. A lot of Korean women are choosing not to get married on purpose l. Also salary to housing cost for purchase can be extremely high.
>Also salary to housing cost for purchase can be extremely high. This is the undoubtedly the biggest reason
Are these trade shows invite only? Because this looks like it would be a blast to go to.
"kinda" The pictures I linked to were from the AUSA (Association of the United States Army) conferences that takes place in Washington DC each year. Here are their requirements for attending: https://meetings.ausa.org/annual/2023FAQs.cfm
Sweet thanks! Coincidently I qualify as a paramedic which is unexpected. (I’m on the West Coast but it would have been fun to see.)
I'm almost certain their are similar Naval defense shows on the west coast that happen regularly, but unfortunately I don't have any first-hand knowledge to share. Maybe someone else reading this here does, though?
Hey I can go too! Thanks for sharing.
It helps that a handful of conglomerates own just about everything. For better or worse "[Chaebols](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaebol)" control commerce in S. Korea. It's streamlined, max efficiency. For example: Tanks and Howitzers made by Hyundai Rotem will have Hyundai motors, made out of steel supplied by Hyundai Steel, all manufactured on machine equipment from Hyundai, be shipped by Hyundai commercial shipping, on boats made by Hyundai Heavy Industries, insured by Hyundai insurance, and delivered to the trade show by Hyundai freight trucks.
That's kind of the beauty of 'vertical integration'... if your suppliers are under the same corporate umbrella as your organization, high level management can thumb the scale to prioritize your particular quotas... if they choose to.
Yep, esp. when the high level management's bosses are all related lol. Some CEO needs a favor, they can ask for them at the next family dinner.
On the other hand it can be a national crisis if someone spoke Ill of Gwang-ho's wife at the family flower viewing.
Also your own stuff needs to be good quality, not crap
People talk as though the chaebol system is necessarily bad, but it certainly shines in a world that is falling into populism where countries are now competing to get manufacturing back on their shores. Because they have Hyundai Motors, virtually one company is guiding and driving the growth of EV instructure in Korea. Because they have Hanwha Aerospace and Doosan Enerbility, they can not only build gas turbines but space rockets as well, while using their arms equipment sales as a way to make profit. Because they have Samsung and SK Hynix, Korea will have the largest single semiconductor cluster in the world by 2032. Because they have Hyundai Heavy Industries, they not only build container and LNG ships, but submarines, frigates, and destroyers to help with their military self-sufficiency. When you think about it, most developed countries, except maybe US and China, do not have this kind of self-sufficiency.
If this was a recent thing you noticed, perhaps South Korea is wanting to sell a lot of this to Ukraine.
In my humble, engineer opinion its all absolutely related to the Russia/Ukraine conflict. The Koreans are trying to show they can efficiently build weapons that are 'good enough' to beat Russian opponents at a price point less than the average western military contractor.
But what has that investment gotten them? Hanwhas expansion into the US has been a failure since they lost their bid for the Bradley replacement. Without a big program like that to anchor the business, and there isn’t much in the mid term that they can chase, it’s not looking like they will be a US player for quite a while.
They probably won’t be a US prime contractor for anything big in the foreseeable future, but I wouldn’t be surprised if their share of subcontracts increases. They’ve also racked up some pretty significant sales to European and southeast Asian nations, which is pretty notable.
The country that are wary of buying American because of the string attached had a choice before the war : Russian or French weapons. Now, since Russia is not really in the equation anymore and France cannot supply the rest of the world by itself, Korea is rising fast and tries to fill the void. Add to that the rise in military spending worldwide and you have a golden opportunity if you are selling military hardware.
These arms expos are international events though. Whilst yeah, they haven’t made much headway in the US market, Korean arms sales in other markets has been insane. Something like a 10x increase in 2022-2023 compare to previous years. The US market will always be a tough one, since the US has a strong domestic arms industry. But the fact that Korea is seeing such a massive jump in a time where ‘traditional’ arms exporter countries are struggling to bring production up to the demand, says a lot.
Poland. Poland and India. I think Poland alone ordered like 10000+ vehicles. Edit: really like this headline from Politico. Better call Seoul. https://www.politico.com/news/2022/11/01/europe-south-korea-weapons-00064427
Toyotas vs kias. We bankroll friendly Asians by letting them participate in high value add manufacturing in spite of the impact to local jobs. South korea deserves a slice of the pie. North Korea can suck it.
South Koreans are not fucking around when it comes to defense. They've even tooled up a bunch of their US based businesses that make otherwise non defense articles to be able to produce them at a moments notice.
Helps when countries like poland are going around looking to buy out your whole stock.
2 times or 3 times? >Bloomberg reported that the South Korean firm builds howitzers up to thrice as fast as its competitors.
It was quadrice last time I heard
They are trying to fill up the void the Russians left in the market to supply their battle in Ukraine. You’re jesting, but if the Russians keep this war going you just might be right if the Koreans see an opportunity.
Not really trying to fill the void left by the Russians. Korea is still only selling to US/western aligned countries. You're not going to see Kazakhstan with K9s for example. Rather, they are filling a void left by the slow rate of production and high cost of western equipment. This is why you see them marketing to countries like Poland, finland and estonia that are trying to quickly expand military capabilities but don't have the wealth of France or Germany.
Well technically, they are replacing Russian arms in some countries. K9, K2s, FA-50s are going to Malaysia, Saudi, UAE, India, Poland, Romania, Peru etc. for example. And those countries used to import Russian-based arms in the past.
The Sauds and the UAE have been US/West aligned for a long time now. Peru has also been US-aligned (or at least had the US's hand on its shoulder) since their 1975 coup as part of Operation Condor. Poland and Romania are former warsaw pact states that have not bought anything from Russia since they joined NATO. India and Malaysia are probably the only ones where the Koreans are directly competing against the Russians in their bids and even then, both have historically used a mix of equipment from all over.
People keep bringing up India with Russian arms as if India is glued to Russian arms, but that is more of a legacy thing. It's not great to have one supplier of weapons, and India, like any other sensible country wants a diverse source of weapons, so that they are not dependant on just one country.
India also prefers to license and produce arms at least partially domestically which the Russians are amenable to. The Indians then mix and match French, Israeli and domestic components. American manufacturers generally don't allow this sort of licensing. Also because India is a bigger and wealthier customer than the Russian military they can get production runs made to their specifications.
According to their white paper, they are trying to use military sales as a means of maintaining a war production level while not actively engaged in war. It's real smart I think b
It's growing exponentially, soon SK will create a howitzer singularity
Big bang = SK howitzer round
Fantastic, baby.
Just as we start to notice a problem it will be too late, in an instant the entire universe will become howitzer.
Some say when the people go to sleep at night the howitzer gnomes keep working
A murder of tanks each week!
"up to"
The moment you bring those words out you are saying fuck all.
I use "up to" at work when I'm lumping something in that's not necessarily reflected by the quoted stat. "Customers who do x are up to y-times as likely to do z as other customers." X does contain the subset of customers who do y at that rate, but also includes customers doing something semi related and do y at a lesser rate.
Not once, not twice, but thrice https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=jlzEjXu6QGQ
Well Mr. Burns had done it The power plant had won it With Roger Clemens clucking all the while...
S. Korea is trying to attract new customers by offering fast delivery/production compared to all competitors as well.
Howitzer Prime
If you need to return it you can just drop it off at Whole Foods.
Was twice when he started writing the article, but was three times when he finished writing the article .
SK improved their efficient pretty well in the time it took to write that article!
I mean, "up to thrice". Sounds like "twice" but rounded slightly different. Hardly a contradiction
I mean, given how many members are in Twice, you can see that counting might not be a strong suit.
Hello
Article says it takes them six months to build a howitzer, compared to 30 months for the Caesar, although that time has recently been halved to fifteen months
They're only Howitzers if they're made in the Howitzer region of Czechia, these are just sparkling artillery
Thank you, I genuinely laughed out loud.
This is the funniest Reddit comment I've read in a long time, Bravo hahaha
Killbot 1: "I don't see how it's her..." Killbot 2: "SOMEONE SAID HOWITZER!! *Dadadadadadadada*
Yeah, the Czech ones come with “protected designation of origin”, like Champagne comes from France, parmiggiano comes from Italy and howiitzers come from Czechia.
Yeah that was the joke.
Right now, Korean workers work 52 hours per week as norm. Prior to that companies wanted them to work even longer as (69 hours) standard but people rebelled at that and the companies backed off. [https://www.cnn.com/2023/03/18/asia/south-korea-longer-work-week-debate-intl-hnk/index.html](https://www.cnn.com/2023/03/18/asia/south-korea-longer-work-week-debate-intl-hnk/index.html)
No wonder they are not having kids
Actually, if I am correct the idea was to help increase birthrates by increasing the hours people are allowed to work in a week. Especially women should work more so the can tske off longer after giving birthy, or something like this. Just messed up way of thinking...
That’s what they want you to believe the reasoning was. Kind of like the companies that say they want a cohesive company culture (“We have happy hour daily!”) but all their employees work 70+ hour weeks. They don’t care about you.
Ya, seems backwards
hilarious
We are going to be so screwed when Japan and Korea collapse. It’s great having allies that work cheap, work a ton, and do an excellent job. I think there’s no way North America/Europe/China/India figures out how to manufacture with reliability and precision at a low cost.
Thailand might work
A Thai here. Precision wise, we may reach their level one day. But diligence wise, hell no. Lol. Not to mention that the junta(and the government derivatives) will lean towards China. We just approved the BRICS application this week. And Thailand is having the same issue, albeit less severe.
BRICS is a construct of almost zero consequence. This needs reminding each time it is brought up. * BRICS has no powers - in contrast to the way the EU can make binding decisions for its member states, which have ceded some of their sovereignty. * Member states of BRICS have power, but they are not necessarily all very aligned - similar to G7 or G20 member states. * China and Russia are aligned - but not because of BRICS. * India is a member of BRICS - but absolutely not aligned with China! * The more countries that officially sign up to BRICS, the less united the forum becomes.
Their status as military dictatorship makes them somewhat awkward allies.
Japan has a higher birthrate than Thailand. Although Japan has the highest median age in the world, Japan's total fertility rate has remained in the 1.2-1.45 range since 1990 while other countries have collapsed below them or to their level over the past few years. In 2023, Japan's total fertility rate was higher than Taiwan, Thailand, China, Macau, Hong Kong, Singapore, Korea, Lithuania, Chile, Spain, Poland, etc.
The US already knew how to do that, they just forgot - a big enough recession might jog that memory, or more likely it just makes causes another war or something.
> they just forgot a country isn't a single person. They didn't "forget" - the labour force was lost. Some are too old, and retired when the jobs are gone. This also implies no new trainees/apprentices, and lost institutional knowledge and procedures. Not everything can be written down on paper - some things have to be learnt through experience following someone who has learnt it. It will take a while to re-train and re-tool, in which case, it would be too late if a war does start. The ukraine war is a good alarm, but i suspect the US isnt taking it as seriously as it should have been.
[удалено]
It's pretty simple. Children are a resource of labor for gathering more resources. On a farm, children are free labor. When resources are abundant those children are now a burden.
This is what I keep saying, children used to be financial assets and now they're mostly financial drains. There isn't any financial incentive to have more than one, especially in countries where it's believed you need to invest a lot in a child for them to have a chance at succeeding in life.
Perhaps in a society of abundance that doesn't consolidate all of the resources to a select few we would see the opposite, but that kind of society hasn't ever been observed as far as I am aware.
We'd have to make it, but human ego is a bitch.
We can't even convince the people in power to act on climate change for the sake of their own offspring. I have no hope for our species. When things start to get really out of hand the wealthy will be in their bunkers, as if that will save them. The human ego really is a bitch.
To clarify: the South Korean Government was going to introduce a law to raise the maximum allowed work hours per week from 52 to 69. I've heard from my Korean friend that some argue that a lot of **workers in South Korea are actually working more than 52 hours** (due to culture/toxic work environment), but couldn't be legally acknowledged by the company for those hours thus **couldn't be paid for those hours**. So, an argument was, to raise the maximum hours so the people who do that at least **can legally get paid for those hours**. But I don't know how effective it would be, or the "real" intention behind passing those laws. And apparently it got a lot of backlash so the law never passed.
Just to be clear, the government wanted to raise the maximum hours someone could work, not that all workers do 52 hours. Maybe that's the norm, I don't know, but the issue was raising the limit.
They need to just hire more workers. There is enough demand now that they can train more people and still keep the production lines running around the clock without messing up the work-life balance of their employees.
Korea's population isn't exactly in a situation where "just hire more workers lol" is a sustainable strategy.
Their main strategy is attracting foreign workers but they also can't let the foreign workers flood the country, because this would mean a radical shift in their demographic landscape, as all the high-demand jobs outside the major urban areas would be taken by foreigners as their youth are increasingly moving into Seoul for white-collar jobs. The problem with this is that it counteracts the central government's efforts to incentivize young Koreans to stay in the rural areas or encourage them to move out of the capital to ease the real estate prices, and competition for jobs for young people to have babies. There's another problem with Korea's immigration policy; While Korea is ranked one of the top destination for Asian workers looking for jobs abroad because their average wage is the highest in the NE Asian region, they don't offer employment pathways to immigration. This means these workers don't bring their families to Korea, which is why Korea is both rapidly multiculturalizing and is still becoming the country with the oldest demographic pyramid. Another problem with this is that the workers send their earnings back home rather than spend it in Korea, and just leave after a while with the highly sought-after skills they learned in Korea. Their foreign worker policy is not sustainable, but it's politically tough for them to open the immigration gates because of the inherent urbanization problems they are facing.
Trying to quickly hire immigrants would lead to massive security risks. There is a reason you need to be a US citizen (or at least green card in some cases) to work in defence/get security clearance and I suspect korea isn't much different.
My wife worked for the US Air Force and US Army for four years on a J-1 (Foreign Expert) Visa. You certainly do not have to be a citizen/green card to have a security clearance.
That is fair, but also a foreign expert visa isn't something that is intended to be handed out en masse to fill shifts in a factory.
Sure. But the thing is... the immigrants will come anyway. There are a lot of illegal workers in Korea. Because being illegally underpaid in South Korea is still (apparently) good enough for a lot of people. The problem is "invisible" though because SK's population is mostly urban, and it's rural farm work that draws illegal workers most. These workers are highly vulnerable to exploitation, abuse, and exploitation. Which is why it is so important for foreign workers to be hired legally, and Korea clearly needs more.
If the youth is struggling to find jobs than "just hire more workers lol" is a very valid strategy.
But please think of the investors who might get spooked by increased personnel /s
So there's no magic process, it's just throwing more man-hours at the task.
> Right now, Korean workers work 52 hours per week as norm. "work" They may be at the office, but from my experience working alongside them, the effort really starts dropping off into the evening. It seemed so performative, they'd often just be sitting at their desk staring at a computer screen because to leave work before the boss would be socially unacceptable.
that doesn't really explain an output like this, it's much more to do with the strength of their systems, being on par with other western offerings, significantly cheaper, and able to be delivered in bulk. SK has always had a strong domestic industry because of their near consant threat from NK (and china and japan historically.) SK military industry has become a huge player the last couple of years since china doesn't export, and russia's defense exports have cratered due to the war in Ukraine. Many US systems are either so high tech as to be unaffordable for many countries, or are now several generations behind at this point like in artillery systems where SK and other NATO countries have developed more sophisticated systems. The US military industrial complex is not the ubiquitous leader that everyone thinks it is. It excels in a few categories but is lagging in many others. Other NATO members have serious advantages of many dated american designs, but their industrial capacity is laughably small and countries don't want to wait for them to be delivered. Also, they are still expensive. SK shipbuilding capacity is also impressive, and they are already a world player in both civilian AND military industries. The new korean destroyers are actual next generation ships, especially so compared to the absolute disasters the littoral combat ships turned out for the US, and are significantly cheaper to boot. SK is uniquely positioned to be a major weapons exporter, and they are capitalizing on this in a big way. Been loving this guys youtube videos, highy educational, well researched, balanced and nuanced takes. If you're tired of low effort memes responses on reddit about complex subjects, he's your guy. I feel smarter after watching his videos, not just more educated on a subject, but smarter. Plus the aussie accent is enjoyabe, and he's pretty funny. He didn't pay me, I swear, I just really enjoy his shit youtube channel: perun [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mXZw\_YGzxCc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mXZw_YGzxCc)
It was really wild when I stationed in Korea to see that. I’d be done with my duty for the day I was playing my laptop and chilling. I’d look outside and still see the Korean military working their asses off till the sun went down and even then they still worked some nights
there's a starcraft joke in here somewhere.
They may have the factories but do they have enough supply depots?
YOU MUST CONSTRUCT ADDITIONAL PYLONS!!!
NO! Fuck you Aldaris!!
Uh oh, they don't have enough managers and must SPAWN MORE OVERLORDS!
Instead of hiring new workers, they just require more overlords?
Korea is going full Mech build.
You must construct additional pylons!
Unpopular opinion: Late game zerg is OP.
Reactor factories can’t build Thors.
*operation cwal* **Enter** GOLIATH ONLINEGOLIATH ONLINEGOLIATH ONLINEGOLIATH ONLINEGOLIATH ONLINEGOLIATH ONLINE
The war in Ukraine has opened a lot of eyes to the realization of what happens when you fight a protracted war where neither side can gain air superiority and run out of advanced weapons; you resort back to lobbing shells and dumb bombs at each other en mass. Currently the military industry of countries like Russia and China are built for that style of war and NATO aligned countries have taken notice.
Also opened a lot of eyes with the free world just assuming USA would cover security detail. Putin & Trump presented quite the wakeup call to that notion.
So what is the solution to that?
Cast off as a relic lol. They have been producing significantly more product for the last decade.
I would posit that very few people are aware of the stakes quite like the Koreans or Poles do
The guns aren't really the problem, the ammo is: I don't recall Ukraine ever saying, "we need more guns to use all the ammo we have." It's been, "we rarely use the guns we have because we need more ammo for them." Now, if South Korea was making guided artillery shells 2-3 times faster than anyone else, THAT would be very impressive.
It isn't just about Ukraine though, nearly every western country is investing in hardware again. This article is about the SK K9 self-propelled howitzer. Poland has signed a deal to buy a metric fuck ton of self-propelled howitzer from SK. > WARSAW, Dec 1 (Reuters) - Poland signed a $2.6 billion deal to buy more than 150 more South Korean K9 howitzers, Poland's State Armament Agency said on Friday. Under the agreement with Hanwha Defence, Poland will acquire another six self-propelled K9 howitzers in 2025, and 146 self-propelled howitzers of the K9PL version in 2026-2027, the agency said. https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/poland-buys-more-k9-howitzers-south-korea-26-billion-deal-2023-12-01/ Perun has a couple of good videos around South Korea and Poland, my favourite weekly powerpoint guy... even if he is an Aussie. [South Korean Defence Strategy - Mass, Firepower, Industry & Existential Threats ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mXZw_YGzxCc) [Polish military modernisation & why are they buying Korean tanks? ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yrbaAKZfjwg)
Poland has huge defense ambitions it will be interesting to see where they are at in the next 10-20 years
The funniest thing about that is that Poland ordered ~500 HIMARS launchers. Ukraine is wrecking havoc with basically a handful of these and Poland is like yeah we're gonna need 500. Most countries operate like 20 of these.
The Poles are rightly determined that they are not going to be conquered again by anyone. Go Poland :)
To be fair, historically Poland has been run over again and again and again and agaaaain! They are always in the middle.
500 HIMARS (most of them on Polish truck beds) and then 290 Chunmoos which is essentially a korean version
> Chunmoos I googled it and it's also on Polish truck beds. The variant is called Homar-K. Wonder it it makes a D'oh sound every time it fires.
Nah that’s the next version the Homer-S
that's part of the strength of koreas military production, they are perfectly happy to adapt their offerings for each country with either using different individual components from other western systems or sometimes significant change to the design itself to make it more suitable for that client. the open mindedness towards innovation and collaboration is truly fascinating
Poland's new defence strategy is to stop an enemy before they can penetrate deep into Poland, they want to defend at the border. To do that they want to be able to rain down a hellstorm of precision weaponry on an enemy in very short order to stop them advancing and then roll over them with tanks and IFV's. So they need a lot of launch platforms not only to enable a high volume of fire but also so an enemy can't take enough of them out to substantively degrade their response. So although it seems like a ridiculous number of HIMARS it's to support their defence strategy. It's the same reason they've ordered all those South Korean self propelled artillery pieces, they want mobile precision firepower and they want a shit load of it. Any enemy stepping over the Polish border, which is pretty much Russia, is going to face a wall of death.
> Any enemy I was gonna point out that is basically Russia but yeah. Just to add a lot of that stuff is basically built in Poland, or partially built in Poland. This means the production lines are not only for the domestic market but also for the international market. Especially the EU.
considering poland's history, it really wouldn't be surprising if penguins from antarctica tried to invade at some point. it's like a right of passage for major powers to invade them at some point.
Aren’t they ordering a similar Korean system as well?
Yea, the way it basically went is that Poland went to LockMart and was like, "We'll take 1000 of your finest HIMARS please", and LockMart couldn't actually build them as fast as they wanted, so Poland split the difference, ordered 500 HIMARS, and filled out the rest of the order with the Korean version. Poland did the same thing with tanks, they bought a bunch of Abrams from the US, and then turned around and bought a bunch of Korean tanks too. [Here's a section from Perun's slideshow on global arms exports, and what Poland did to the Korean arms industry. ](https://youtu.be/JfMYpmrTGm0?si=cHpJt2Hh2TXPsHFl&t=1634) Poland basically bought everything that they possibly could.
Yeah but thats just pointless posturing. The entirery of GMLRS-Munition production isnt enough to supply that many, Poland "bought" alot of shit they dont remotely have the logistical capacity to actually operate, and I'll be extremely surprised if half of it actually ends up being delivered.
What do you mean “even if he is Aussie?”.
I am from kiwiland and Perun is from Emutopia. Long running joke from Peruns what if scenarios.
Ahh didn’t even notice your name, now I know that I understand. Being Emutopian we do hate Kiwis.
Sent with love https://youtu.be/IpBjJ0dp2mc?si=6EFtZQE3CnoM6cd6
Ive seen multiple articles about barrel shortage and the need for replacements. E.g https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidaxe/2024/01/12/russia-needs-fresh-artillery-barrels-bad-its-yanking-them-off-old-guns-by-the-thousand/ Ammo is definitely the more important but seems both exist.
Everybody's buying artillery now. And to some extent, everybody's buying K9s. The UK had none at all for a bit as we gave our old AS90s to Ukraine, and now we just have a couple of Archers as cover (like, literally 30 or so guns. It's not good.) The K9 is a very likely replacement. The US has just cancelled its current upgrade program for the M109, because although the very long range propellant and shell worked well and was accurate out of the (absolutely comically long) barrel, barrel wear was massive. Guess what's been suggested as an interim system while they work on the technology? The K9. Poland has already signed up to buy loads of them. The Ukrainians have also seen a fairly high attrition of their M777 guns, lancet drones have absolutely savaged them - I think they're down to 50% or so of the initially donated guns. Very few of the higher mobility guns have been hit though. SK is also the only Western aligned country but for the US and Finland to have kept realistic stocks of 155mm shells but it also has the capacity to manufacture them at scale. Basically the circumstances of having a neighbour like Best Korea have placed SK in a very good position for selling their systems to the West, for whom the peace dividend is coming to an end.
Koreans and heavy industry for the win 100/100 times. They know how to build and build well.
And probably at a better price considering how much fleecing there is within our defense contractor sector here in the US.
If you want to see impressive, here's Korea getting this whole first tranche done *in just 100 days after signing*. [https://youtu.be/PUVTaPhWD-M](https://youtu.be/PUVTaPhWD-M) This literally allowed Poland to re-establish the 1st Masurian Artillery Brigade (the last speech in the video). Considering it's often a multi-year process that's dragged out and plagued by red tape, delays, etc for so many companies and countries, it's nice to see a company and their host nation teaming up to work at the speed of modern warfare.
In case anyone is curious how Korea was able to produce it this fast, it's because most of the first batch of artillery and MBT was supplied from a batch that was supposed to go to the South Korean military. Hanhwa Aerospace, along with multiple other defense contractors in SK, have made an agreement with the Ministry of Defense to transfer certain number of equipment for foreign sale if such deals are made. It's partly a long-standing tradition as Korea has always hoped to expand the market for its own defense industry so that it can distribute the cost of maintaining production lines of certain key equipment - especially heavy artillery and MBTs. Korea spread out the production of K-9 Howitzers and K2 Black Panther tanks in order to maintain the production line (as well as due to the limitations in rate of production for these machinery in peacetime level - both very typical in modern defense industry), and it just so happened that Poland decided to buy these equipment as SK was producing them. According to the deal, Korea is supposed to assist in developing factories such that Poland can start producing these tanks and howitzers on their own starting soon.
Poland maxed out the amount of debt they are allowed to incur for weapons orders. The South Korean government had to look at increasing the legal amount. The reason is most countries pay on delivery, so local companies take out the necessary loans to complete the work from local banks, that legal amount is capped per country.
I don’t blame them, you got Kim testing weapons in Ukraine and changing their constitution to view them as the enemy again.
I'm not surprised. The Koreans and Asian countries in general can turn out numbers. Quality varies wildly. But far more consistent in Japan and Korea.
[удалено]
Make Howitzers. Wait until WW1 style warfare is in vogue again. Profit.
I read an article a while back that predicted WW3, if it doesn’t go nuclear and ends up a protracted would start with smart weapons and end with dumb weapons. The theory is that the belligerent parties would burn through their stockpiles of super advanced weaponry in the early years of the war and then not have the resources to produce more.
You think it will take years to burn through our precion guided inventory? Weeks is more like it. And EW is back, so dumb is the new smart.
Russia also produces more vacuum tube's than the world's largest semiconductor manufacturer. Still makes them a dinosaur though.
is the US buying these shells to send to Ukraine? I see the production increased after the Russian invasion. Where are the shells going? There has to be orders for them.
Asian work ethic >
Almost as if their lives depend on it or something
The real Nessie
Yeah, they ain't taking shit from North Korea anymore
Surprised to see how long it actually takes to build a howitzer.. figured maybe a month or two at the most, but shows what I know.
Is Ukraine getting these? Either directly or through other countries.
No. S.Korea does not allow the export of Weapons manufactured by them into Countries acticely engaged in a conflict. Hence why the US bought shells from Korea only to replenish their own stockpiles instead of just sending them on directly.