Born of a bailout

KAI was born on Korea’s Armed Forces Day, 1 October 1999, out of wreckage. The Asian financial crisis of 1997 had left the aircraft divisions of three conglomerates, Samsung Aerospace, Daewoo Heavy Industries and Hyundai Space and Aircraft, deep in the red. Under President Kim Dae-jung’s restructuring, the government ordered them merged into one national champion. A fourth player, Korean Air, refused to join and was shut out of some defence work for years afterwards. What emerged was the only company in South Korea that builds complete aircraft, and by 2017 the country’s largest defence contractor.

The trainer that paid for itself in tanks

The ingredients were already good. In the early 1990s Samsung’s Sacheon plant had assembled 140 F-16C/D Block 52 fighters under licence from Lockheed Martin, the KF-16. Daewoo had licence-built the Bo-105 helicopter, Hyundai a BK 117. And in 1988 the government had launched the KTX programme for a trainer of Korea’s own. It became the KT-1 Woongbi, first flown in November 1991, the first indigenously developed South Korean aircraft. Its export career started with a barter: in 2001 Indonesia swapped eight CN-235 transports for 12 KT-1s, and on 25 April 2003 the first was delivered, the first Korean aircraft export of any kind.

Golden Eagle goes supersonic

The bartering did not stop there. When Turkey bought 40 KT-1s in 2007, the deal was bound up with armour technology from Korea’s K2 Black Panther tank. Peru followed with 20 in 2012, assembled partly at home. Meanwhile the real ambition was flying at Sacheon. Developed with Lockheed Martin, which put up 30 per cent of the money and the flight control and avionics know-how, the T-50 Golden Eagle first flew on 20 August 2002. When development closed in January 2006, Korea had become, by the reckoning of Korean Wikipedia, the twelfth country to fly a supersonic aircraft of its own design. The Black Eagles aerobatic team flies it today.

Poland calls

The T-50 grew teeth. The TA-50 and then the FA-50 light fighter turned a trainer into a combat jet weighing about three quarters of an F-16. Indonesia, Iraq, Thailand and the Philippines bought it; Philippine FA-50s flew their first combat sorties in January 2017 and bombed militants in Marawi that summer. Then came the order that changed KAI’s standing. After Russia invaded Ukraine, Poland needed to replace MiG-29s and Su-22s fast, and the United States could not deliver extra F-16s in time. On 28 July 2022 Warsaw signed for 48 FA-50s. Defence minister Mariusz Błaszczak said speed of delivery decided it. Malaysia ordered 18 more in 2023.

Hunting Hawk

KAI’s biggest bet first flew on 19 July 2022: the KF-21 Boramae, named after a young goshawk. The KF-X idea had survived ten feasibility studies, Turkey declined to partner, and Indonesia took a 20 per cent stake that was later cut to 7.5 per cent. The jet is a twin-engine 4.5-generation fighter with semi-recessed weapons and room for an internal bay later. When Washington was slow to clear American missiles, Korea integrated the European Meteor and IRIS-T instead. The first production KF-21 entered service with the 156th Fighter Squadron on 22 September 2026, almost exactly 27 years after KAI was founded.

Growing pains

It has not been a smooth ride. In 2014 state auditors found that Airbus’s technology transfer for the KUH-1 Surion helicopter covered only 134 of 450 power-train components; deliveries were halted in 2016 over an icing problem that took a winter in Michigan to fix. In 2017 an accounting fraud scandal led to the arrest of chief executive Ha Sung-yong. Yet the numbers keep climbing: 5,222 employees in March 2024, revenue of 3.70 trillion won in 2025, satellites, wings for Boeing and Airbus, and the Nuri space launcher. A company assembled to save three failing businesses now makes South Korea an aircraft exporter.

Factories

• Sacheon headquarters and plant · Sanam-myeon, Sacheon, South Gyeongsang — Main factory and airfield; former Samsung Aerospace site
• Goseong plant · Goseong, South Gyeongsang — New factory for Gulfstream G280 wings, about 30 km from Sacheon

People

• Ha Sung-yong · former chief executive — Arrested in the 2017 accounting fraud case
• Kim Jong-chool · chief executive

Records and firsts

• KT-1 Woongbi: first indigenously developed South Korean aircraft
• KT-1 delivery to Indonesia on 25 April 2003: first export of a Korean aircraft
• T-50: South Korea’s first supersonic aircraft, making Korea the twelfth nation to fly its own supersonic design