Korean Information Service, Korea ranked 11th in military spending for 2006 with an expenditure totaling $21.9 billion, according to a tally released Monday (June 11) by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI).
The figure accounts for 2 percent of world defense spending.
The United States topped the list with $528.7 billion, or 46 percent of the world, followed by Britain at $59.2 billion. France, China and Japan rounded out the top five nations.
The institute also calculated the spending according to purchasing power parity (PPP), based on comparison to the U.S.
China came in second in this calculation with $188.2 billion, followed by India ($114.3 billion). Russia and Britain were the other two in the top five.
Korea ranked 11th under PPP as well, with the spending estimated at $30.1 billion.
In naming world's nuclear forces, the institute cited five states — China, France, Russia, Britain and the U.S. — under the non-proliferation treaty (NPT) as owning more than 26,000 nuclear warheads.
India, Pakistan and Israel are “de facto” nuclear weapon states outside the NPT.
North Korea made clear its intent to obtain nuclear capability, the institute said, but its detonation in October last year is widely believed to have been only a partial success. This “raised doubts about whether North Korea could manufacture operational nuclear weapons,” it said.
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