South Korea Builds a Submarine Manufacturing Base

Defense Industry Daily reports that South Korea has contracted for six new Type 214 submarine 'kits' from ThyssenKrupp in Germany. South Korea has three of these boats already, which were assembled by Hyundai Heavy Industries' shipyards in South Korea. For the second round, however, South Korea has selected Daewoo Shipbuilding to build the first boat using the German assembly package, and the end of the story makes their goals clear: "A KSS-III program is also planned, in which South Korea would design and manufacture an indigenous 3,000 ton submarine by 2020."

South Korea will join the club of nations able to build, operate and export highly capable conventional submarines. The Type 214 uses HDW fuel cells for its AIP system. With a multi-week submerged endurance, these can be viewed as essentially littoral nuclear submarines - or blue-water systems with slightly lower performance and limited endurance.

Given how much of South Korea's economy depends on shipping, this makes sense. Even leaving out its fractious northern neighbor, there are numerous submarine proliferators in the region - China, India, Pakistan, and Japan, with Russia showing new interest in a Pacific submarine fleet - and the submarine market seems to be doing fairly well. It makes especially good sense to build and nurture a domestic submarine base if you think you can make some export monies doing so, and that's a good bit of what South Korea - with its large and growing chunk of the civil shipbuilding market - is doing.