South Korean Warships Serve in Seven Foreign Navies, but Only Three Bought Them New

Hanwha Ocean has been selected as preferred bidder for the Royal Thai Navy's next-generation frigate program, the South Korean shipbuilder said in a release published by Naval News on September 9, 2026. Preferred-bidder status is a procedural step before the two sides negotiate terms; no contract has been signed and no ship has been ordered.

The Royal Thai Navy's public notice proposed THB 16.73 billion, about KRW 683.3 billion, for the construction of one frigate together with integrated logistics support. According to Naval News, the competing bidders were ASFAT, Hyundai Heavy Industries, Navantia, ST Engineering and TAIS. Hanwha Ocean cites its delivery of the frigate HTMS Bhumibol Adulyadej to the Royal Thai Navy in 2018.

The proposed design is the OCEAN-40F. For the first time, Naval News reports, the Korean builder has partnered with European suppliers: Naval Group for the combat management system and sensors integration, MBDA for the weapons fit, and Cohort for the sonar and torpedo launchers. The armament listed is Exocet MM40 Block 3c anti-ship missiles, VL MICA NG missiles in a 16-cell vertical launch system and a 76 mm main gun.

GlobalMilitary.net's navy inventories put the Thai program in context. Across every foreign fleet tracked for 2026, 15 warships of South Korean design are in service with seven navies. Six of them were built new for export, for three customers: the Philippines with four, Bangladesh with one and Thailand with one. The other nine are second-hand Pohang-class and Donghae-class corvettes transferred from the Republic of Korea Navy after their service at home.

• Philippine Navy: five in service, comprising two Jose Rizal-class frigates (BRP Jose Rizal, BRP Antonio Luna) and two Miguel Malvar-class frigates (BRP Miguel Malvar, BRP Diego Silang), all built new by Hyundai Heavy Industries, plus the ex-ROK Navy Pohang-class corvette BRP Conrado Yap. Two more Miguel Malvar-class ships are on order and two further Pohang transfers are planned.
• Vietnam People's Navy: three ex-ROK Navy Pohang-class corvettes.
• Peruvian Navy: two ex-ROK Navy Pohang-class corvettes, BAP Ferré and BAP Guise.
• Colombian National Navy: two ex-ROK Navy corvettes, the Pohang-class ARC Almirante Tono and the Donghae-class ARC Nariño.
• Egyptian Navy: one ex-ROK Navy Pohang-class corvette, Shabab Misr.
• Bangladesh Navy: one modified Ulsan-class frigate built new by Daewoo Shipbuilding & Marine Engineering, ordered in March 1998 and commissioned on June 20, 2001, listed by GlobalMilitary.net as BNS Khalid Bin Walid; the ship has carried more than one name.
• Royal Thai Navy: one, HTMS Bhumibol Adulyadej (FFG-471).

The Thai frigate is the closest precedent for the new program. Built by Daewoo Shipbuilding & Marine Engineering in South Korea and developed from the ROK Navy's Gwanggaeto the Great-class (KDX-I) destroyer, it was delivered in 2018 and commissioned on January 7, 2019. Hanwha Ocean is the former Daewoo Shipbuilding & Marine Engineering, so a second Thai frigate would come from the same yard as the first. A signed contract would make Thailand a repeat new-build customer for Korean warships, the second after the Philippines, which has ordered additional Miguel Malvar-class ships. On GlobalMilitary.net's ATLAS Index of military power, South Korea ranks 5th and Thailand 31st.

The next step is negotiation of terms between Hanwha Ocean and the Royal Thai Navy. Until a contract is signed, the only Korean-designed warships in the export pipeline recorded by GlobalMilitary.net are the two new-build Miguel Malvar-class frigates on order and the two Pohang-class transfers planned for the Philippines.

The count covers classes of South Korean design in GlobalMilitary.net's navy inventories. It excludes hulls built in Korea to designs the site files under another origin, such as Indonesia's Nagapasa-class submarines and the United Kingdom's Tide-class fleet tankers, as well as non-warship craft. The split between new-build and transferred ships is an editorial classification by class and ship history, not a database field.