South Korea was the seventh-largest buyer of U.S. defense goods last year on a government-to-government contract basis.

The Pentagon's Annual Military Assistance Report says Seoul purchased 460 million U.S. dollars worth of defense products from Washington last year on the basis of foreign military sales, a sharp decline from 790 million dollars the previous year.

The Pentagon attributed the decline to South Korea's purchase of two Aegis destroyers in 2008.

Saudi Arabia was the biggest buyer of U.S. defense supplies with 1.67 billion dollars last year.