December 15, 2024: South Korea is currently undergoing a political crisis that involves President Yoon Suk Yeolan, an unpopular president who tried to impose martial law to deal with protests against him. Trying to use martial law failed, made South Koreans even angrier at their president, and they now want to impeach him. Yoon’s nickname is gyong, which translates as tough guy or manager.

Yoon’s former profession was that of criminal prosecutor, and he played a role in removing two other South Korean presidents. South Korea has had 13 presidents since the end of the Korean War in 1953, of whom nine have been forced out of office by impeachment or threats of impeachment, assassination and military coup. In December the current president was threatened with impeachment.

South Korea is not a particularly corrupt or tumultuous country. The annual Transparency International Corruption Perceptions Index rates as the 32nd least corrupt nation among the 180 countries examined. A distinctive feature if South Korean culture is intolerance of bad behavior by presidents, though some actions that would get a South Korean president kicked out of office would not even happen in most other industrialized democratic nations. Most other democracies are more tolerant of presidents or prime ministers who are found to have kin or friends that are engaged in corruption. Such corruption is embarrassing and generally criticized but South Korea is one of the few nations that demands their president be removed from office.

Meanwhile, South Korea has other thigs to worry about. For example, the dictatorship in North Korea is selling Cold War era weapons to Russia for use in Ukraine. South Korea is selling quantities of modern weapons to a growing number of export customers who want, and can afford, the best. Export sales in 2021 were $7.3 billion but the Ukraine War caused that to spike to $17 billion in 2022 and $20 billion in 2023. Sales have expanded so quickly that South Korea had to obtain additional financing because import-export banks hit mandatory limits on how much they could do to facilitate arms exports from one country in a single year.

South Korea has profited from this because NATO nations bordering Ukraine or Russia have dramatically increased defense spending and purchased nearly $15 billion worth of South Korea weapons and munitions so far. South Korea produces a lot more military weapons and equipment than the North and it is of the highest quality. South Korea based its weapons on what the Americans were offering but added additional features that made their weapons more attractive to export customers. This included lower prices. One side effect is that, once Poland receives all the South Korean tanks, mobile artillery and guided or unguided rocket launchers from South Korea, they will have the most powerful army in European NATO. This is to discourage any Russian attacks on Poland or any other NATO nation in the area. Because of all these new export customers, South Korea is on track to depose China from its current position as the fourth largest arms exporter.

While South Korea is relatively lacking when it comes to corruption, such is not the case in North Korea, where such misbehavior is becoming more common and flagrant. Even government officials are stealing from the government with a sense of impunity, which is not quite justified. Thieving officials who are flagrant or defiant are sometimes arrested and executed. Most of the time they can bribe their way out or call on more powerful officials to protect them. That is changing as the bribes demanded are increasing, often to levels the guilty officials cannot pay. Senior officials willing to bail out a subordinate are less likely to do so. The cost of everything is going up, including how much it costs for corrupt officials to stay alive. The Chinese government has become more aggressive in detecting and disrupting this smuggling. This is not just to reduce gangster activity in China, but also to assist Chinese foreign policy. Chinese diplomats can let it be known that they can do something about halting or providing smuggling capabilities to other nations.

Then there is the issue of South Korean attitudes. South Korea has become an economic powerhouse and one of the top ten economies in the world. Because of that South Korea has more friends and trading partners in East Asia than Russia does. South Korea has the wealth and technical skill to build nuclear weapons and reliable ones at that. Russia believes that offending South Korea is a bad idea while disappointing North Korea creates no new problems. Then there are the earlier South Korea efforts to keep nuclear weapons out of the Korean peninsula. The Americans have already taken the lead in this. In 1991 the United States withdrew all its nuclear warheads from South Korea and managed to get the two Koreas to agree not to develop and deploy nuclear weapons. This included both Koreas signing the NPT/Non-Proliferation Treaty. North Korea went ahead and developed nuclear weapons anyway, even though it was obvious that South Korea could do the same and produce more reliable nuclear warheads and more effective submarines to launch them from.

When North Korea violated the agreement, South Korea went ahead and produced SLBMs/Submarine Launched Ballistic Missiles with conventional warheads launched from South Korean designed and built submarines. Since 2014 South Korea has been building nine 3,300-ton KSS-III submarines, each able to carry six or ten locally developed SLBM ballistic or cruise missiles with a range of up to 3,000 kilometers. North Korea realized they could not develop and build anything similar. South Korea now has a growing fleet of locally built submarines that can carry ballistic or cruise missiles. Most South Koreans now approve of building nuclear warheads, just in case North Korea foolishly makes a serious threat to use such missiles against South Korea or any other country. This made North Korea realize that the economically more powerful and technically more accomplished south not only can outproduce the north when it comes to any type of weapon, but has actually done so many times and is now a major producer and exporter of modern weapons. South Korea is not impressed with North Korean threats to attack them with devastating effect. The north can attack, but the south can retaliate with far greater destructive force. That is why the north continues to issue threats that South Korea ignores.

The South Korean economy continues to grow while the North Korea economic growth is stalled. In terms of GDP per capita, the South Korean economy is 20 times the size of North Korea’s. North Korea insists it has no economic problems, but quietly accepts any opportunities to change that. Selling weapons to Russia for their war in Ukraine is one of those opportunities and North Korea is making the most of it.

Recent arms exports to Russia were considered newsworthy because of the War in Ukraine where Russian troops desperately need additional weapons. That brought attention to the fact that North Korea exports a lot of weapons to countries all over the world. These are usually weapons for outlaw nations or rebels. North Korea will sell to whoever can pay. There are no guarantees that the weapons will work. Often they don’t, as Russia has learned. Major clients include countries under sanctions or simply seeking weapons from a supplier who does not question what the weapons will be used for. This includes nations like Iran, Syria, Egypt and Qatar. Egypt and Qatar are banned from obtaining certain types of weapons. North Korea does not ban anyone who can pay, including the costs of smuggling in the weapons. This includes what North Korea must pay to Chinese smugglers who can hide the weapons shipments in legitimate ship cargoes and get most of these concealed weapons delivered. Some shipments have been discovered, which is why so much is known about the Chinese involvement.

North Korea has not been hiding its increased trade with Russia. North Korea is sending weapons and Russia is paying for it with food shipments that are now arriving by train. The government wants the North Korean people to know that the chronic food shortage problem is being addressed because of increased weapons exports to Russia. This also means more work for some North Korean factories that produce weapons. What is not mentioned is that Russia is losing their war in Ukraine and the severe economic sanctions imposed on Russia are having an impact on the Russian economy. This means that buying weapons from North Korea is a temporary measure. The food imports from Russia have not yet had an impact on North Korean food prices, which are still rising.