| I guess if you cannot produce something that will top what's already out there, there's no need to reinvent the wheel. It's easier to clone and copy.
Currently South Korea has been pretty aggressive with local R&D. Their current designs are based on technology they have bought from the US but usually such baby steps are required to gain the industrial and high tech know how of the arms industry before a full blown domestic product can be produced.
The most non-clone equipment are the K-1 Submachine gun and K-2 rifle. They are very different, especially so that the K-2, though the magazine feed and trigger system is similar to the M-16 series, the gas system is closely related to the AK series rifles.
The T-50 trainer jet is very much F-16 and you can also see bits of F-5 in there but it's again a baby step towards maturing the aircraft industry.
It's making the steps to create new stuff.
Japan of course has some very original hardware and has been producing them for some time now. Their Type 90 MBT is among the finest MBTs in the world.
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