SEOUL, September 07 (AJP) - South Korea's Hanwha Group has footed the entire 13 billion won ($9.7 million) bill for this year's Seoul International Fireworks Festival, keeping alive a tradition spanning more than two decades as the explosives-rooted conglomerate rises as one of the world's fastest-growing defense suppliers.
About 1 million spectators packed Yeouido Hangang Park and surrounding stretches of the Han River on Saturday for the 22nd festival, according to Hanwha.
Teams from South Korea, the United States and Britain filled the night sky with displays ranging from fireworks mounted around Wonhyo Bridge to symmetrical bursts launched from both sides of the river.
Hanwha covered the entire cost rather than charging admission or relying on ticket revenue. Of the 13 billion won spent this year, 4.5 billion won went to safety management, up about 17 percent from 3.85 billion won last year.
About 5,000 safety and crowd-control personnel were deployed, the largest number for the event, including some 1,200 Hanwha employees volunteering at the site.
The group has maintained the festival since its first edition in 2000, apart from years when events were suspended because of unavoidable circumstances including the COVID-19 pandemic.
What began as a corporate-sponsored fireworks show has grown into one of Seoul's largest annual public gatherings.
Hanwha Group Chairman Kim Seung-youn has tied the continued spending to his management philosophy of "Together, Further."
"The reason Hanwha sends fireworks into the sky is because the happiness can be shared by everyone looking up at it," Kim said ahead of this year's event.
The event also carries a historical link to Hanwha itself.
The conglomerate was founded in 1952 as Korea Explosives Co. and built its early business around industrial explosives before expanding into chemicals, energy, finance, aerospace, shipbuilding and defense. Hanwha says it became the first South Korean company to manufacture dynamite using domestic technology in 1959.
The same expertise in explosives and energetic materials that underpinned the group's origins eventually became part of a much broader defense business.
Those businesses have gained traction as governments increase military spending and rebuild weapons inventories amid the war in Ukraine and wider geopolitical tensions.
Poland has emerged as a particularly important customer for South Korean weapons, while Hanwha has also secured K9 contracts in countries including Finland, Romania, Australia and India.
Hanwha Aerospace's European land-arms order backlog had surged to 30.3 trillion won by mid-2024 from 3.1 trillion won in 2020 as demand accelerated after Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
Hanwha ranked 16th in Defense News' 2026 list of the world's 100 largest defense companies, up six places from the previous year. Its defense revenue reached $10.44 billion in 2025, compared with $6.82 billion a year earlier.
Hanwha Aerospace also broke into the U.S. arms market in August with a contract to supply six prototypes of its wheeled K9 Mobile Howitzer to the U.S. Army, which the company described as the first contract between the U.S. military and a South Korean company for a domestically developed weapons system.
This year's fireworks drew inspiration from Vincent van Gogh's "The Starry Night," while displays formed words including "SEOUL" across the sky.
Hanwha also invited about 300 veterans and their families and streamed the event online, drawing 2.68 million views and a peak concurrent audience of 260,000.
Safety operations included real-time crowd-density monitoring through Hanwha's Orange Safety app and CCTV feeds supported by KT's 5G network-slicing technology.
AJP Takeaways
- Hanwha Group paid the full 13 billion won cost of this year’s Seoul International Fireworks Festival, which drew about 1 million spectators.
- The conglomerate has kept the festival running for more than two decades since launching it in 2000, aside from unavoidable cancellations including during the COVID-19 pandemic.
- The tradition reflects Hanwha’s explosives roots even as the group expands globally in defense and aerospace, with exports of systems such as the K9 howitzer and Chunmoo gaining traction amid rising geopolitical risks.
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