South Korea’s recent advances in technology, especially robotics, provide an opportunity for the U.S. Department of Defense to increase its research and development work with its East Asian ally, a Pentagon official said Nov. 21.
South Korea demonstrated “impressive” robotics capabilities at last year’s DARPA Robotics Challenge, in which 23 teams from around the world competed for two days on an obstacle course in California, said Dale Ormond, principal director for research in the Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering. A South Korean team took first place in the event, winning $2 million in prize money. 
To build on this expertise, DoD has allocated $3 million to develop disaster-relief robots with South Korea, Ormond said. Also, when Stephen Welby, assistant secretary of defense for research and engineering, recently visited South Korea, the Korea Agency for Defense Development proposed six potential joint projects, and Welby urged the agency to follow up with more specifics.
In addition, the Army’s Tank Automotive Research Development and Engineering Center (TARDEC) in Warren, Mich., recently signed an information-sharing agreement with South Korea and is looking for potential projects.
“There is a lot of priority on our part to do this,” Ormond said at an event on U.S.-South Korean relations at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in Washington, D.C. “It’s all a matter of finding the right projects, defining those terms and working through … the bureaucracy and the paperwork we have to go through.”
Chang Myoung-jin, minister of South Korea’s Defense Acquisition Program Administration (DAPA), told the CSIS audience that South Korea’s government and industry are both making “heavy investments” in robotics. “Compared to the U.S. technology, we may not be at par yet,” Chang said. “However, we are making good progress, and we continue to forge ahead in these areas.”
Other potential areas of cooperation include cyberspace, information technology and shipbuilding, said Kim Chansoo, head of the technology strategy planning team at DAPA’s Defense Agency for Technology and Quality. Last month, South Korea’s defense minister indicated that bilateral teams were looking for ways to enhance cyber and naval cooperation.
Separately, the Center for a New American Security (CNAS) released a report Nov. 21 urging greater military technology cooperation between the two countries to help South Korea defend itself against North Korea. For example, the report recommends jointly testing new hypervelocity weapons early in the next U.S. administration.
“Showing that existing U.S. and ROK [South Korea] artillery and weapons can be retrofitted today to fire smart, hypervelocity weapons provides a quick way of demonstrating to Pyongyang that a mass missile strike could be countered through advanced conventional means,” the report says.