12 March 2021

Seoul reveals ‘Buy Korea Defense' plan

by Jon Grevatt

South Korea’s Defense Acquisition Program Administration (DAPA) has revealed plans to introduce a defence procurement policy that formally prioritises local sourcing over imports.

DAPA said that the ‘Buy Korea Defense’ (BKD) scheme was consistent with the objectives of the recently introduced Defense Industry Development Act. Details of the BKD, it said, were presented at an 11 March meeting of a new DAPA council set up to push through reforms under the legislation.

DAPA said that the BKD policy would mandate the evaluation of the benefits that local research, development (R&D), production, and procurement programmes would provide to the domestic economy.

South Korea has outlined plans to prioritise the acquisition of locally made components and systems on key platforms such as the KF-X fighter aircraft. (Korea Aerospace Industries)

It said that the BKD plan was a policy to “prioritise domestic development when determining the acquisition method and related comparisons of domestic R&D and overseas purchases”. DAPA did not disclose a schedule for introducing the plan, but indicated that it would be applied in procurements of components, systems, and subsystems.

Commenting on related BKD processes, DAPA said, “First, when deciding a project implementation method, the acquisition costs and life-cycle costs of domestic procurement and overseas purchases will be considered in reflection of the domestic industrial and economic ripple effects.”

It added, “In the case of projects that cannot be decided by overseas purchases, regulations will be amended so that domestic companies must participate [in the bidding process].”

DAPA said that once the BKD plan was introduced the “possibility of domestic R&D of weapons systems increases and opportunities for excellent domestic small and medium-sized enterprises to enter the global supply chain are expected to expand”.

South Korea’s Defense Acquisition Program Administration (DAPA) has revealed plans to introduce a de...

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