NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte, left, and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, second from left, attend a roundtable meeting of the North Atlantic Council during the NATO summit in Ankara, Wednesday. The summit comes at a critical moment for the 77-year-old transatlantic alliance, as U.S. President Donald Trump presses members to honor their pledge to boost defense spending amid Washington's pullback from Europe. UPI-Yonhap
With Korea's failure to secure Canada's multibillion-dollar submarine procurement contract being the latest in a string of high-profile defense export losses in Western markets, experts advise the country to make a fundamental shift in how it approaches buyers aligned with NATO.
The Canada deal, which went to a German-Norwegian consortium largely on grounds of NATO interoperability, followed a series of similar setbacks. In June, Hanwha Aerospace lost a 900 billion won ($599 million) French multiple-launch rocket system upgrade contract to a U.K.-French consortium. In May, it lost a 6 trillion won contract for Romania's next-generation infantry fighting vehicles to Germany's Rheinmetall. In November 2025, Hanwha Ocean lost an 8 trillion won bid for Poland's next-generation submarine program to Sweden's Saab.
