STOCKHOLM: Faced with constant missile and nuclear threats from its belligerent northern neighbour, South Korea is boosting its arms sales and aims to become a major exporter, a study said on yesterday, reports AFP.

South Korea’s arms industry accounted for 2.2 percent of global top 100 producers’ sales in 2016, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) said in a report listing the world’s “top 100” military services.

South Korean arms-producing companies’ combined sales totalled $8.4 billion (7.1 billion euros) the same year with a 20.6 percent rise in sales compared to 2015, SIPRI added.

“The increasing nuclear weapons capability in North Korea has led to major investments in South Korea,” SIPRI Senior Researcher Pieter Wezeman told AFP.

In defiance of repeated international condemnations and sanctions, Pyongyang fired an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) last week, which reached an altitude of 4,475 kilometres (2,780 miles) before splashing into the sea 950 kilometres (590 miles) east of its launch site, North Korean state media said.

The North, which says it needs nuclear weapons to protect itself from “hostile” US forces, has vowed to accelerate its weapons programmes in response to “evil” sanctions imposed by the UN Security Council.

Once a mainly agricultural backwater devastated by war, South Korea has been one of the world’s largest importers of military equipment and technology for decades—mostly from the US—but in recent years its domestic sector has grown rapidly.

In the face of North Korean threats, the proportion of government spending that Seoul devotes to defence is among the world’s highest outside Middle East and African conflict zones, according to SIPRI’s 2016 figures.