Will the KF-21 Contribution Fee Be Re-discussed?

Indonesia Overdue Payments of About 1 Trillion Won Over 4 Years
Chief Eom Dong-hwan Departs to Resolve Contribution Issues

Um Dong-hwan, Administrator of the Defense Acquisition Program Administration (DAPA), visited Indonesia to resolve the issue of Indonesia's contribution to the domestically produced supersonic fighter jet KF-21 project.

According to DAPA on the 5th, Administrator Um departed the day before and plans to stay until this weekend to hold talks with senior officials of the Indonesian Ministry of Defense. A military source said, "It was difficult to arrange the meeting as the local Indonesian officials in charge kept changing."

Since 2015, the two countries have been jointly developing the KF-21 (called IF-X in Indonesia) fighter jet by sharing a project cost of 8.1 trillion won until 2026. In January 2016, Indonesia agreed to cover 20% of the KF-21 development cost, approximately 1.7 trillion won (later reduced to about 1.6 trillion won), by June 2026. In return, Indonesia would receive one prototype and various technical data, and locally produce 48 fighter jets in Indonesia.

However, after paying only 227.2 billion won by January 2019, Indonesia did not make any payments for nearly four years citing budget shortages, then paid an additional 9.4 billion won in November last year and about 41.7 billion won in February this year. According to the plan, Indonesia should have paid over 1.1 trillion won by now, but it has only paid 278.3 billion won, currently delaying nearly 1 trillion won in contributions.

Earlier, on the 8th of last month (local time), President Yoon Suk-yeol held a summit in Jakarta, Indonesia, with President Joko Widodo of Indonesia, where they agreed to closely cooperate to successfully complete the next-generation fighter jet joint development project. Following this, foreign media reported that the Korean government might abandon cooperation with Indonesia, which has delayed payments, and instead partner with the United Arab Emirates (UAE) or Poland, but the government has denied these reports.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.