South Korean Agency for Defense Development Suspected of Leaking “Record-Scale” Data Including U.S. Military Secrets to UAE... Details of Secret Liaison Office Remain Classified

Washington, D.C., July 11, 2025

The massive leak of military secrets from South Korea’s Agency for Defense Development (ADD)—long regarded as a pillar of the country’s defense self-reliance—reveals a profound structural vulnerability that cannot be dismissed as mere individual misconduct. Investigations and media reports in 2023 have detailed how, during 2019–2020 under the Moon Jae-in administration, large numbers of ADD researchers resigned, with sensitive weapons-development data allegedly following them into new positions at defense firms in the United Arab Emirates (UAE).

South Korea’s National Police Agency, National Intelligence Service, and Defense Acquisition Program Administration launched a joint investigation in 2020. By 2023, they had identified 69 former ADD researchers accused of unauthorized data transfers. Among them, 23 were found to have moved large quantities of classified material well beyond personal notes. In May 2023, an SBS investigative report revealed that one researcher had transferred more than 680,000 classified files via USB drives and cloud accounts. ADD, in internal reports, labeled this breach “unprecedented in scale.”

Leaked materials included design schematics for guided weapon seekers, seeker algorithms, missile guidance and control systems, tactical simulation models, and satellite, aviation, and electronic warfare communications technologies. According to Defense Acquisition Program Administration documents and defense industry experts, much of this technology was jointly developed with the United States. Under U.S. export-control regulations (ITAR/EAR), many of these components cannot be transferred to a third country without State Department approval. South Korea’s ADD air-defense and surface-to-surface missile systems, including seeker designs, were built on PAC-2/3 technologies or integrated U.S. software and communication links.

In May 2017, the UAE declared it a “special strategic partner” and formalized defense cooperation through a 2018 summit with then–Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed in Abu Dhabi. In 2019 and January 2020, Im Jong-seok, former Presidential Chief of Staff, visited Abu Dhabi twice as a special envoy. Although the Blue House described these visits as focused on nuclear energy and investment, internal South Korean defense industry reports suggest that discussions also included ADD technical cooperation, the establishment of UAE research institutions, and negotiations over ADD personnel transfers.

In fact, six or seven former ADD researchers were confirmed to have taken jobs between 2020 and 2021 at the Technology Innovation Institute (TII), a national defense research organization under UAE’s Ministry of Defense and part of Khalifa University in Abu Dhabi. These researchers were instrumental in leading design work and training. The UAE defense companies that they supported produced ship-to-ship missiles and precision-guided mortar bombs locally, weapons systems that, as of 2020, had not even reached production approval in Korea. Internal ADD reports noted that UAE firms had begun manufacturing based on “designs for ship-to-ship missiles that Korea itself did not yet have in production.”

When investigations began in 2020, the Moon administration publicly labeled the matter an “individual misconduct” issue and ordered an inquiry. Yet by the end of Moon’s term in May 2022, not a single person had been prosecuted. Police and intelligence officials repeated for years that the case was “under investigation,” while USB and cloud backup files, employment contracts, and UAE cooperation agreements remained classified. Suspicion also surrounded the establishment of an ADD liaison office in Abu Dhabi—an initiative officially justified as part of defense cooperation—which was effectively kept from public scrutiny in National Assembly intelligence committee hearings. In January 2022, Lee Seok-gu, former commander of the Defense Security Command who oversaw military and ADD security policy from 2019 to 2021, was abruptly appointed ambassador to the UAE, where he took charge of defense diplomacy. Asked in parliament about the ADD office in Abu Dhabi, the Defense and Foreign Ministries simply cited “national security” as grounds for withholding details.

The episode’s broader security implications deepened in 2024–2025, as the U.S. Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) documented UAE-based firms’ connections to sanctioned states such as Iran and North Korea. In December 2024 and April 2025, OFAC sanctioned UAE-based companies and individuals for supplying components to Iran’s UAV and missile programs. Official Treasury releases detailed how these networks used paper companies in the UAE and Hong Kong to funnel parts to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and launder funds to support WMD programs. OFAC also confirmed that North Korea exploited UAE-based financial networks to evade sanctions.

According to OFAC’s 2025 documents, Iran’s UAV and missile programs sourced critical components from the UAE, while North Korea similarly used UAE banking channels to secure restricted funds. Such findings transform what might have once sounded like conspiracy theories about technology flowing from Korea through the UAE to adversaries like Iran and North Korea into demonstrable security risks backed by financial intelligence and sanctions enforcement.

Under U.S. export-control law (ITAR/EAR), any retransfer of American-origin military technology to a third country requires explicit State Department authorization. Given that ADD’s missile guidance, communications, and electronic warfare designs incorporate significant U.S.-origin technology, the transfer of this data to UAE-based entities—and potentially onward to Iran or North Korea—represents a serious potential violation of those rules.

This scandal does not simply threaten South Korea’s defense-industrial competitiveness or its reputation for technological integrity. It risks damaging the U.S.–ROK alliance itself by placing American defense technology into the hands of adversaries. Experts warn that the South Korean government must conduct a full audit of leaked materials, publicly disclose the circumstances of UAE defense company establishment and ADD’s Abu Dhabi office, and cooperate with U.S. authorities in a formal joint investigation to confirm ITAR/EAR compliance.

As South Korea rises in the 2020s to become a major defense exporter, with projects like the KF-21 fighter, L-SAM missile defense system, and the broader “K-Defense Package,” repeated failures to secure sensitive technology could create a grim irony: Korean-made weapons threatening not only its own security but that of its allies.