Moon Jae-In began his five-year tenure as South Korea’s president in 2017 with a pledge to act as his country’s chief peacemaker, repairing relations with North Korea and ending the decades-long state of war on the Korean peninsula. Having failed to achieve that objective, Mr Moon looks likely to end his tenure—elections are due next month—with a reputation as his country’s chief arms dealer.

Last month Mr Moon returned from a trip to the Middle East with a $3.5bn contract to sell a home-grown missile system to the United Arab Emirates (UAE), the biggest deal in the history of South Korea’s defence industry. As a belated outcome of the same trip a $1.7bn agreement to sell an artillery system to Egypt was completed earlier this month, after a decade of negotiations. Mr Moon also signed a deal worth $700m to sell the same guns to Australia when he visited Camberra, its capital, in December.

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