Dutch shipyard Rotterdamsche Droogdokmaatschappij not interested in building submarine for South Korea according to the Dutch newspaper Leeuwarder courant dated 4 June 1987

An item reported that board member A.N. de Bruin of the Rotterdamsche Droogdokmaatschappij (1) a day earlier stated that his shipyard deliberately relinquished an order of South Korea of building a submarine. The Dutch shipyard was afraid that the only reason was to disassemble the submarine and copying the concept. The yard was still doing all efforts to obtain an order of eight submarines of Saudi Arabia and a large Canadian order of ten ships with building costs 5 milliard dollar. The fact that an US submarine succeeded in reaching the Arctic Ocean with the Canadian icecap without been noticed caused a (temporarily) delay.

Note
1. This shipyard built the four Dutch submarines of the Walrus-class still serving in the Royal Netherlands Navy. She was under political pressure forced to relinquish an order of Taiwan. In the past already two submarines of the improved Dutch Zwaardvis-class design were built for Taiwan.