Daewoo Telecom K7

The Daewoo Telecom K7 is a 9×19mm Parabellum submachine gun fitted with an integral suppressor, in service with the Republic of Korea Armed Forces. Its design is derived from the Daewoo K1A assault rifle, but it uses a simpler blowback action instead of the gas impingement system found in the original weapon. The K7 was first shown outside South Korea at the IDEX 2003 convention in the United Arab Emirates, and it is now produced by SNT Motiv.

Although the Republic of Korea Armed Forces already operated the H&K MP5SD6 when the K7 entered production, many special forces units relied on unconventional weapons for covert operations due to the high cost of both imported and domestically made submachine guns. Because importing or manufacturing such weapons was expensive, the Republic of Korea Army Special Warfare Command requested a less costly integrally suppressed submachine gun. Development began in April 1998 through the Defense Agency for Technology and Quality (DTaQ), part of the Agency for Defense Development (ADD), and Daewoo Telecom (now SNT Motiv), a subsidiary of the Daewoo Group. The project was completed in December 2000.

In 2020, Iran revealed a domestically produced submachine gun based on the K7 design. It appeared at the Victory Day National Arms Exhibition on May 24, 2021, in both suppressed and non-suppressed versions. On March 20, 2023, Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi’s bodyguard was seen carrying a K7 at a martyr’s celebration. When the Iranian weapon was first unveiled, some suggested that Iran had obtained actual K7s from Indonesia. According to a March 2024 report from the Korea Customs Service (KCS), a former SNT employee was caught illegally exporting about 480,000 gun parts and production equipment worth ₩26.6 billion ($19.7 million) from September 2019 to March 2023 to a state-owned defense contractor in a Middle Eastern country. It is believed that illegally copied K7s and production equipment reached Iran during this period, even though South Korea generally prohibits arms exports to Iran.

The K7 does not use the direct gas impingement system of the K1A; instead, it operates with a simple blowback system. The bolt reciprocates when firing and locks back after the magazine is empty. It uses a 30-round vertical box magazine, and it can also accept 30-round magazines from the IMI Uzi or 32-round magazines from the Beretta Model 12.