With South Korea and Germany competing to win Canada’s next-generation submarine project, presidential chief of staff Kang Hoon-sik said Seoul has done all it can and will now await the outcome.

On social media on Thursday, Kang said that during his visit to Canada, he'd met with all top-level decision-makers he'd sought to engage on not only the submarine project but also broader industrial and security cooperation.

Kang visited Canada as President Lee Jae Myung’s special envoy for strategic economic cooperation to support South Korea’s submarine project bid and delivered a letter from Lee to Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney.

Kang said that Canada had shown a strong commitment to its submarine acquisition program as a turning point for its industrial and security policy and that, as senior Canadian officials had consistently stressed, the project was not merely about purchasing new weapons.

Kang also said the submarine project would serve as a major leap forward for South Korea’s defense industry, predicting that, if successful, it would mark the country’s most significant entry into the Western defense market and facilitate broader access across the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.