The war in Ukraine has reminded Korea of a truth as old as warfare itself. War cannot be sustained by strategy alone. It needs factories, supply chains, skilled workers, stockpiles, logistics networks, and political will.
For Europe and Korea, this lesson is urgent. The term "industrial resilience" has recently become fashionable, but the reality beneath it is stark. The war in Ukraine has exposed ammunition shortages, long production lead times, fragile supply chains, and dangerous single points of failure.
These vulnerabilities did not affect Ukraine alone - they rippled through the defence ecosystems of Russia, Europe, and the broader West. We have seen that modern warfare consumes equipment and ammunition at a pace that peacetime planning simply has not anticipated thus far.
Korea’s Strength Is Also Its Weakness
Korea understands this better than anyone. It lives adjacent to one of the most militarised threats in the world. It has built a formidable defence industry and has become a major supplier of tanks, self-propelled artillery, aircraft, naval vessels, missiles, and munitions. But Korea’s greatest weakness is not a deficit of technology or industrial capacity, but its concentration.
Korea’s defence industry is efficient, but efficiency does not equal resilience. A small number of large conglomerates dominates critical sectors. Supply chains are optimised for speed, cost, and export performance. This may work in peacetime, but in war, that same efficiency becomes a liability. A single disruption to a key supplier, port, factory, or production line can lead to paralysis of the entire system.
Europe has the complete opposite problem. It has geographic depth and industrial diversity, but its defence production is fragmented and siloed within national systems, regulatory frameworks, and competing political interests. Europe has potential but lacks speed. Korea has speed but lacks depth. That is precisely why Korea-Europe cooperation makes strategic sense.
Building a Real Co-Production Network
First, decentralisation of production must be prioritised. Korea and European countries need to move beyond buyer-seller relationships and build genuine co-production networks. Critical items - munitions, missiles, combat vehicle components, batteries, sensors, electronic systems - must be produced across multiple locations. This is not redundancy for its own sake. It is survivability. If one production node is struck, others must be able to continue.
Second, standardisation is non-negotiable. Industrial interoperability matters as much as battlefield interoperability. If munitions, spare parts, maintenance systems, software interfaces, and certification processes do not align, rapid support in a crisis becomes impossible. Delays in crises cost lives. Systems do not all need to be identical, but at critical junctures, compatibility is essential.
Third, sustained coordination between government, industry, and the military is imperative. Industrial resilience cannot be built through one-off events or belated emergency procurements only once a crisis begins. It demands continuous communication between the military that understands operational requirements, the industry that builds the equipment, and the governments that fund and regulate both. As the war in Ukraine has demonstrated, drones, artillery, air defence, and electronic warfare evolve rapidly. Industrial systems must be capable of adapting at the same pace.
This is where Korea has something genuinely valuable to offer Europe. When the Korean government, military, and industry align around a common objective, things happen quickly, sometimes in a matter of days or hours. Europe brings geographic depth, mature technology, and broad market access. Combined, the two can build a defence-industrial base that neither could sustain alone.
True Resilience Means Accepting Inefficiency
This cooperation should not be treated as a simple commercial opportunity. It is a strategic necessity. Deterrence depends not only on what you have on day one of a conflict, but on what you can sustain at day 100, day 500, and beyond. When an adversary looks at Europe and Korea, they should see not isolated national industries but a connected network, one capable of absorbing shocks and maintaining production.
The truth Korea faces is uncomfortable but clear. For decades, advanced economies treated surplus as waste. They reduced inventories, consolidated suppliers, and built just-in-time systems. By the logic of commercial efficiency, this was the right thing to do. As to the question of national survival, it was the wrong answer.
True resilience requires accepting a certain degree of inefficiency. It means maintaining stockpiles, developing alternative supply chains and transport routes, building surge capacity, and reaching political consensuses before a crisis arrives. It means treating the defence industry not as a line item on a balance sheet, but as a core instrument of national power.
Europe and Korea are partners on this journey. Both face serious security challenges. Both are technologically advanced. Both depend on rules-based trade, secure sea lanes, and credible deterrence. And both have learned, at great cost, that industrial weakness is strategic weakness.
The war in Ukraine has already delivered its warning to Europe and Korea. The question now is whether Europe and Korea will act on that lesson before the next crisis arrives.
Lt. Gen. Chun In-Bum, Republic of Korea Army (Ret.), is a Distinguished Military Fellow at the Institute for Security and Development Policy, a Senior Fellow at the National Institute for Deterrence Studies, and a former Commander of the Republic of Korea Army Special Warfare Command.
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