Target: Ontario Shipyards, Mohawk College, Canadian Department of National Defence, PM Carney. Tone: Forensic, Urgent, Structural.

The Scene at Okpo

On February 2, 2026, Canada's Defense Procurement Secretary Stephen Fuhr stood in the turret of a K-9 Thunder self-propelled howitzer at Hanwha Aerospace's Changwon facility, barrelling down a track at 65 km/h.1

He reportedly marveled at the experience.

Three weeks later, Hanwha Ocean had signed cooperation agreements with two Ontario institutions — Mohawk College and Ontario Shipyards (Heddle) — promising "Technology Transfer" and "Smart Shipbuilding" training centers.2

This is how a $60 billion national security decision gets made: not through rigorous technical interrogation, but through industrial spectacle targeted at the right audience.

Understanding why this works requires confronting something Canada's defense establishment has not been asked to examine: the structural role of racial hierarchy in Korean lobbying strategy — and the structural vacuum created by appointing a technically unqualified white official to oversee the most complex military procurement in Canadian history.

The Script Korea Runs

South Korea is not simply an aggressive arms salesperson. Its bid for the Canadian submarine contract is operating within a specific, deeply institutionalized cultural framework.

According to Professor Park Kyung-tae of Sungkonghoe University, Korean society has internalized a racial hierarchy imported from the West:

"Korean-style racism internalized Western racial hierarchies, where white people are at the top and Black people are at the bottom. Koreans see themselves as somewhere in the middle — ideally closer to the top — and take pride in that position."3

South Korea ranks 5th worst for Racial Equity among 89 countries surveyed by US News & World Report.3

This racial hierarchy is not abstract. It is visible in Korean cultural exports. Korean films and stage productions — including "No Other Choice" — have repeatedly deployed First Nations and Native American war bonnets, headdresses, and ceremonial regalia as entertainment costume: played for spectacle, worn as visual shorthand for "exotic other."4

In Canada, war bonnets are sacred, earned honors in Plains First Nations traditions. Their appropriation violates the spirit of the TRC's 94 Calls to Action. This is not a minor cultural faux pas — it is a reconciliation obligation. Korea's own government made the structural problem explicit in 2025, when its National Human Rights Commission told the UN that racism does not exist in Korea. Civic groups condemned this as "a serious betrayal of Korea's human rights obligations," submitting a 20-page counter-report to the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination.5 Human rights lawyer Park Ji-eun responded: "The claim that there is no racism in Korea is absurd. The government must face the reality that racism is both structural and normalized."5 Despite ratifying the UN's ICERD treaty in 1978, Korea has still not passed a national anti-discrimination law.

The Canadian institution Hanwha chose to court with a Letter of Intent is Mohawk College — named for the Mohawk Nation, one of the founding members of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy. Mohawk College has active Indigenous student programs and community ties with Six Nations of the Grand River. The company proposing to bring Korean expertise to an institution named after an Indigenous nation comes from a cultural environment where that nation's neighbors' sacred regalia is movie costume — and whose government officially denies that this signifies anything at all.

The pattern extends far beyond symbolic cultural appropriation. In the same weeks Hanwha's delegation toured Canadian facilities and signed Letters of Intent in Ontario, Korean netizens were posting AI-generated images of animals with the caption "Angry Southeast Asian women" — posts that collectively reached 83 million views.6 Korean users mocked paddy fields, economies, and the appearances of people from Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, Vietnam, and the Philippines, triggering the pan-regional #SEAblings solidarity movement as counter-response.7 A sitting Korean county mayor proposed that rural men be sent to "import brides from Sri Lanka or Vietnam" to address population decline.8

These are not fringe incidents. They are expressions of the same racial hierarchy Professor Park describes — now directed at the nations of Southeast Asia. The historical weight is stark: both Thailand and the Philippines sent combat troops under the UN flag during the Korean War to defend South Korea's existence. Thai soldiers — approximately 6,326 deployed — earned the battlefield nickname "the Little Tigers" from Korean commanders.9 Filipino troops, through the Philippine Expeditionary Forces to Korea (PEFTOK), were among the largest non-Western contributions to the UN coalition that kept South Korea on the map — approximately 7,420 personnel who died on Korean soil defending South Korea's right to exist.10 Their descendants are the people being compared to animals in posts with 83 million views.

This is not a generalized cultural blind spot. It is the racial hierarchy in operation — and Korea's own government, in its 2025 UN report, officially declared this hierarchy does not exist.5 No accountability mechanism has been triggered. No structural consequence has followed. The denial is what makes the repetition inevitable — across K-pop markets, across falsified Canadian university partnerships, across sacred Indigenous cultural property, and now, across a $60 billion defense contract.

This is not an incidental cultural quirk. It is the operating logic behind Korea's diplomatic and commercial interactions with Western governments. The goal when meeting Western officials is not to present data for technical scrutiny — it is to impress white authority. To make the right people feel like they are in the future.

The factory tour is not a presentation. It is a performance. And it is performed for a very specific audience.

The Audience Canada Sent

Who did Canada send to receive this performance?

Stephen Fuhr, Secretary of State for Defence Procurement, appointed May 13, 2025 by PM Mark Carney.11

Fuhr's qualifications: an aviation technology diploma (not an engineering degree) from Trinity Western University; 20 years as an RCAF fighter pilot, retiring at the rank of Major; a brief stint running a small satellite comms startup; and a career as a Transport Canada pilot examiner.11

He chaired the House of Commons defence committee from 2015–2019 — a valuable political credential — but holds no background in:

  • Submarine systems architecture
  • AIP (Air-Independent Propulsion) propulsion technology
  • AI-enabled sonar and acoustic signature analysis
  • Cyber-physical security for interconnected naval platforms
  • Arctic operational doctrine or submarine rescue protocols

In 2026, overseeing Canada's $60 billion submarine procurement demands fluency in exactly these domains. Fuhr's credentials qualify him to certify instrument ratings. They do not qualify him to interrogate whether Hanwha's design can survive a hostile Arctic environment that defeated more experienced bidders.12

When a Korean delegation architects an industrial spectacle for a charming, technically unqualified white official who leaves moved by a tank ride, the script is running exactly as designed. Neither side needs to be acting in bad faith for the dynamic to be structurally catastrophic.

Canada's Near-Homogeneous Negotiating Table

The structural problem runs deeper than one appointment.

Of the 21 Canadian ambassadors to South Korea in recorded history, all present as white — Anglo or francophone European names, without exception. The US, by contrast, appointed Korean American Sung Kim to Seoul (2011–2014), half-Japanese American Harry Harris (2018–2021), and currently has Korean American Kevin Kim — a Johns Hopkins doctorate candidate and former Chief of Staff to the U.S. Special Representative for North Korea — leading the U.S. Mission Seoul as Chargé d'Affaires ad interim.1314

At the current Head of Mission level, only 17% of Canadian diplomats self-identify as Visible Minorities — far below the 26.5% of the Canadian population that is visible minority.13 There have been zero Indigenous heads of mission in recent appointment cycles.

When Hanwha's lobbying team sits across from Canadian officials, the table they see is almost entirely white. This does not register as a problem in their cultural framework. It registers as confirmation that the right people are in the room and the right script should be run.

Diverse, technically qualified decision-makers would disrupt this script — not because they accuse anyone of bad faith, but because they ask questions the deference-to-white-authority model was never designed to answer:

What is the acoustic signature profile of the proposed design in water temperatures under −2°C? What is the failure mode of the AIP module at Arctic depth? Who certified this design, and has that certification been independently audited?

No public record indicates these questions have featured in Canada's evaluation criteria. Instead, within three weeks of that tank ride, Hanwha had signed cooperation agreements with two Ontario institutions.

A Defense Industry in Freefall

The performance is all the more revealing given Hanwha's actual record.

Korea's defense export revenue has collapsed by 45% in two years — from $17.3 billion in 2022 to just $9.6 billion in 2024. Poland, one of Korea's closest defense partners, rejected Hanwha's submarine bid in favor of Sweden's Saab, determining the 3,600-ton Korean model was ill-suited for Baltic Sea depths.12

A Korean expert analysis stated plainly: "Korea should proceed as if the probability of success is below 40 percent."12

If Hanwha's technology failed the operational requirements of the shallow Baltic, the prospect of it succeeding in Canada's deep, frigid, ice-navigating Arctic should be treated as an extraordinary claim requiring extraordinary evidence. Ret. Korean Navy Capt. Moon Keun-sik has warned that the procurement has devolved into a "state-to-state industrial contest" where industrial cooperation ratios account for as much as 80 percent of the evaluation — meaning technical performance is worth only 20%.15

"Submarine weapon systems are directly tied to the lives of their crews," Moon wrote. "Escape and rescue options for submarines are extremely limited."15

Canada is preparing to spend $60 billion on a platform that its own officials evaluate primarily as a jobs program.

The Wrong Submarine for the Wrong Ocean

Set aside, for a moment, every claim in this document about racial hierarchies, institutional fraud, labor exploitation, and procurement corruption. Assume the best-case scenario: Fuhr is sharper than his credentials suggest, the delegation asked the right questions, and Korea's problems are a work in progress.

Independent Western technical analysis reached its verdict before the lobbying blitz even began.

Writing in the National Security Journal in August 2025 — six months before Hanwha's Ontario signing ceremonies — Dr. Andrew Latham, professor of international relations at Macalester College and non-resident fellow at Defense Priorities, concluded that the KSS-III is "optimized for someone else's war."16

His analysis is specific. The Korean submarine's most dramatic feature — vertical launch tubes for ballistic and cruise missiles — has "no practical use to Canada." Ottawa has no submarine-launched ballistic missile doctrine. The KSS-III's 3,300-ton hull, designed to operate in Korea's confined Northeast Asian theater against North Korea and China, is less agile in the shallow approaches of Canada's Arctic Archipelago than the German Type 212CD's more maneuverable 2,500-ton design.

Most critically: Korea has never exported the KSS-III before. Canada would be the first foreign test case — absorbing all integration risks on a platform with no NATO pedigree, no NATO training ecosystem, and no allied supply chain. The German alternative, with its battle-tested hydrogen fuel-cell AIP system proven to keep submarines silently submerged for up to three weeks, operates across NATO navies in Germany, Norway, and Italy. Canadian sailors would be entering an established alliance ecosystem. With Hanwha, they would be on their own.

"Dazzlement," Latham wrote, "is no substitute for strategic certainty."16

Ret. Navy Capt. Moon Keun-sik confirmed the same conclusion from the procurement integrity side, eight months later: technical performance — the only thing that keeps submariners alive — has been reduced to a 20 percent weight in Canada's evaluation.15

Two independent voices. One Western strategic analyst writing before the lobbying started. One Korean naval officer writing during it. Neither is making a political argument. Both reach the same place: this is a platform built for a different ocean, evaluated by a corrupted process, that risks becoming — in Latham's precise words — "another procurement debacle tomorrow."16

The racial analysis in this document explains why the blind spot exists. These two experts confirm what is inside it.

The Crime Scene at the Shipyard

When Fuhr toured the Okpo shipyard on February 2 — Hanwha Ocean's primary facility in Geoje city — he was visiting an active site of documented labor exploitation.

Just days after his visit, unionized workers exposed that 4,000 migrant subcontracted workers at Hanwha Ocean's shipbuilding operations received bonuses equal to just 46.8% of what Korean subcontracted workers received — a discriminatory two-tier system that President Lee Jae-myung had falsely praised as "equal."17

Hanwha's labor practices are not an aberration. A migrant worker at a Korean industrial site was physically bound and hoisted by a forklift in 2025 — a case that triggered national outcry.18 These are the supply chains Canada is being asked to import.

USMCA/CUSMA labor provisions exist precisely to prevent this. That Fuhr toured the Okpo site days before the abuse was publicly denounced — and no reported due diligence was triggered — illustrates the depth of the blind spot.

The "Ghost Talent" Pipeline

Hanwha's promises to Mohawk College and Ontario Shipyards depend on a Korean university system currently collapsing under a massive fraud scandal.

Seoul National University (SNU) — the primary source of Hanwha's engineering talent — took its international partner database offline to hide fake partnerships during the very week Canada's defense delegation was visiting Korea.19 Dongguk University had been listing a fake partnership with the University of British Columbia, which UBC was compelled to confirm carries no active institutional agreement — but only after the BC Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner (OIPC) had to intervene in Gender Watchdog's stalled Freedom of Information request. Dongguk then executed a botched "panic scrub": silently deleting UBC while simultaneously reverting Toronto Metropolitan University to its 2021 dead name "Ryerson" — exposing that their records had not been updated since before TMU's April 2022 name change.20 Multiple universities — Chung-Ang, Sogang — have since taken their entire partner databases dark to evade audits.21

Independent risk assessment has predicted a 12-18 month delay in AIP module delivery and a 15-25% decline in new PhD enrollments as Korea's engineering pipeline absorbs this reputational shock.22

You cannot transfer technology you do not have, from a talent pool that does not exist, certified by institutions whose credentials are under active investigation.

The "Technology Transfer" Hanwha promised Mohawk College is, at its core, a promise backed by a fraudulent academic system — a system that has also produced lethal consequences for the foreign students it lured in. Tu Anh, a 25-year-old Vietnamese graduate, died fleeing a government "human-hunting" immigration raid — the endpoint of a pipeline that begins with fake university partnerships and ends with a vulnerable foreign national trapped in a visa enforcement system that refuses to call her a victim.23

The Epstein Economy Behind the Contract

Hanwha does not operate in isolation. It operates within what Korean observers have called an "Exploitation Economy" — a system in which corporate impunity, state capture, and sexual violence are structurally connected.

Korea's sex trade accounts for approximately 4% of GDP.24 The 2017 documentary Save My Seoul documented that "corporate slush funds are used to pay for prostitution or sexual entertainment" (30:33), that "8 out of 10 Korean males have bought sex" (27:28), and that police actively refuse to classify coerced women as victims (40:45).25

This is the institutional environment in which Hanwha's executive culture operates. The same impunity that protected Epstein, protects compliant labor abusers and protects the bid-rigging of public funds.

At Dongguk University — the academic institution most directly linked to Hanwha's talent pipeline — a faculty member convicted in 2017 of bid-rigging government subsidies was subsequently promoted twice and eventually made Dean.26 This is not an anomaly. This is institutional capture in operation: the systematic rewarding of loyalty over legality.

If Korean institutions reward the bid-rigging of public funds with promotion, Canada's $60 billion procurement — conducted by a technically unqualified official, evaluated on 80% industrial-benefit criteria, targeting an all-white Canadian negotiating table — is at severe risk of being plundered by the same logic.

Six Months of Warnings, Still No Audit

In August 2025, we issued a documented warning to Canadian defense officials about the "Talent Cliff" and "Semantic Fraud" in Korea's academic system. Within 48 hours, institutional traffic to our documentation spiked 10x — from 2–15 views per day to 129 views in a single day.27

Our documentation reached the decision-makers. They read it. And Hanwha is still in contention.

This is what structural blindness looks like from the outside: the information is available, the warnings are documented, the traffic spikes prove institutional receipt — and the procurement continues, because no one in the room has the technical qualifications to act on the evidence, and the cultural performance being staged is one the room was designed to receive.

A Demand for Structural Reform

To the Canadian Government and Ontario Partners:

You are preparing to spend $60 billion on a contract with a company that:

  1. Discriminates against migrant workers (paid 46.8% of standard wages at the very shipyard your procurement secretary visited).
  2. Failed the technical requirements of its own allies (rejected by Poland for its submarine program).
  3. Relies on a university talent pipeline currently offline and under fraud investigation.
  4. Operates within a bid-rigging culture that promotes those convicted of procurement fraud.
  5. Performs industrial spectacle calibrated for white Western authority figures using an internalized racial hierarchy that your near-homogeneous diplomatic corps structurally validates.

The solution is not to accuse anyone of bad faith. The solution is to appoint technically qualified, diverse oversight — people who will ask the questions the current script cannot survive:

What are the acoustic signatures? What is the Arctic performance record? Who independently certified these claims? Why is SNU's partner database offline?

Stop the deal. Commission an independent technical audit. Diversify the oversight board. Do not let Canada's national security become the bailout for Korea's industrial decline and the validation prize for its racial hierarchy.

Citations

  1. The Korea Times, "HD Hyundai meets Canada's defense delegation to back Hanwha's sub bid" (Feb 4, 2026). https://www.koreatimes.co.kr/business/companies/20260204/hd-hyundai-meets-canadas-defense-delegation-to-back-hanwhas-sub-bid ↩

  2. The Korea Times, "Hanwha Ocean signs cooperation agreements in Canada" (Feb 19, 2026). https://www.koreatimes.co.kr/business/companies/20260219/hanwha-ocean-signs-cooperation-agreements-in-canada-amid-submarine-project-bid ↩

  3. The Korea Herald, "'It's just subtle, not serious': What Koreans miss when downplaying racism" (Jan 4, 2025). https://www.koreaherald.com/article/10381673 ↩ ↩2

  4. Gender Watchdog (@Gender_Watchdog) on X, "First it was 'Parasite' and now 'No Other Choice' commits cultural appropriation of Aboriginal / First Nations culture" (Nov 6, 2026). https://twitter.com/Gender_Watchdog/status/1986465927228260633 — Related thread: https://x.com/Gender_Watchdog/status/1983569304819061185 ↩

  5. The Herald Insight, "Civic groups condemn racial discrimination as Korea faces criticism for xenophobia" by Jeongmin Kim, Grade 11, Chadwick International School (Nov 3, 2025). https://heraldinsight.co.kr/news/articleView.html?idxno=5837 ↩ ↩2 ↩3

  6. The Korea Times, "Why are Southeast Asians angry at Korea?" (Nov 20, 2025). https://www.koreatimes.co.kr/opinion/columns/20251120/why-are-southeast-asians-angry-at-korea ↩

  7. The Diplomat, "#SEAblings: Southeast Asia Unites Against Korean Racism" (Nov 15, 2025). https://thediplomat.com/2025/11/seablings-southeast-asia-unites-against-korean-racism/ ↩

  8. BBC News, "South Korea's demographic crisis sparks controversial marriage proposals" (Oct 22, 2025). https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-68892341 ↩

  9. Ministry of Patriots and Veterans Affairs (South Korea), "Thailand's Contribution to the Korean War" (Accessed Feb 2026). https://www.mpva.go.kr/mpva/contents.do?key=676 ↩

  10. Philippine Embassy in Seoul, "Philippine Expeditionary Forces to Korea (PEFTOK)" (Accessed Feb 2026). https://seoulpe.dfa.gov.ph/peftok ↩

  11. Wikipedia, "Stephen Fuhr" (last updated Jan 28, 2026). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Fuhr ↩ ↩2

  12. Korea JoongAng Daily, "Poland submarine bid loss offers lessons for Korea's defense industry" (Dec 30, 2025). https://koreajoongangdaily.joins.com/news/2025-12-30/opinion/columns/Poland-submarine-bid-loss-offers-lessons-for-Koreas-defense-industry/2488520 ↩ ↩2 ↩3

  13. Policy Options (IRPP), "Trudeau set a high bar on diversity in appointments. Will Carney match it?" (Oct 2, 2025). https://policyoptions.irpp.org/2025/10/diversity-appointments/ ↩ ↩2

  14. U.S. Embassy & Consulate in the Republic of Korea, "Kevin Kim Chargé d'Affaires ad interim U.S. Mission Korea" (Oct 27, 2025). https://kr.usembassy.gov/102725-kevin-kim-charge-daffaires-ad-interim-u-s-mission-korea/ ↩

  15. The Korea Times, "What's lost in Canada's bid to purchase naval vessels" (Feb 16, 2026). https://www.koreatimes.co.kr/opinion/columns/guestcolumns/20260216/whats-lost-in-canadas-bid-to-purchase-naval-vessels ↩ ↩2 ↩3

  16. National Security Journal, "Canada Must Go German For Its New Submarine" by Dr. Andrew Latham (Aug 26, 2025). https://nationalsecurityjournal.org/canada-must-go-german-for-its-new-submarine/ ↩ ↩2 ↩3

  17. The Korea Times, "Hanwha Ocean's conflict with subcontracted workers undermines Lee's praise" (Feb 20, 2026). https://www.koreatimes.co.kr/business/companies/20260220/hanwha-oceans-conflict-with-subcontracted-workers-undermines-lees-praise ↩

  18. Business & Human Rights Resource Centre, "S. Korea: Migrant worker bound and lifted by forklift sparks national outcry" (Aug 2025). https://www.business-humanrights.org/en/latest-news/s-korea-migrant-worker-bound-and-lifted-by-forklift-sparks-national-outcry-and-government-response/ ↩

  19. Gender Watchdog Blog, "The Harvard of Korea has pulled the plug: SNU Goes Dark" (Jan 26, 2026). https://blog.genderwatchdog.org/the-harvard-of-korea-has-pulled-the-plug-snu-goes-dark/ ↩

  20. Gender Watchdog Blog, "Panic Scrub: Dongguk Deletes UBC, Reverts to Dead Names" (Jan 19, 2026). https://blog.genderwatchdog.org/panic-scrub-dongguk-deletes-ubc-reverts-to-dead-names/ ↩

  21. Gender Watchdog Blog, "The 'Panic Scrub' Spreads: Chung-Ang and Sogang Universities Go Dark" (Feb 11, 2026). https://blog.genderwatchdog.org/panic-scrub-spreads-chung-ang-sogang-go-dark ↩

  22. Lumo Risk Assessment (Jan 26, 2026). https://blog.genderwatchdog.org/lumo-risk-assessment-jan-2026/ ↩

  23. The Korea Times, "Family of late Vietnamese graduate demands gov't apology over fatal immigration raid" (Dec 30, 2025). https://www.koreatimes.co.kr/southkorea/society/20251230/family-of-late-vietnamese-graduate-demands-govt-apology-over-fatal-immigration-raid ↩

  24. Wikipedia, "Prostitution in South Korea". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prostitution_in_South_Korea ↩

  25. Save My Seoul (Documentary, 2017). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GF9ZoVWhBxY ↩

  26. Gender Watchdog Blog, "From Indictment to Dean's Office: How Dongguk University Rewarded a Criminal Conviction with Promotions" (Feb 18, 2026). https://blog.genderwatchdog.org/from-indictment-to-deans-office-how-dongguk-university-rewarded-a-criminal-conviction-with-promotions/ ↩

  27. Gender Watchdog Blog, "Traffic Spike Evidence: Pattern of Institutional Monitoring Across Arms Export Campaigns" (Oct 29, 2025). https://blog.genderwatchdog.org/traffic-spike-evidence-institutional-monitoring-arms-export-campaigns/ ↩