Posted on August 12, 2026
The Republic of Korea (ROK) and the United States are advancing their shipbuilding partnership with the July 2026 opening of a cooperation center in Washington, D.C., paving the way for Seoul’s planned $150 billion investment in U.S. shipbuilding.
The Korea-U.S. Shipbuilding Partnership Center will be the hub for ROK investment, U.S. shipyard modernization, workforce development and joint research. The center, which follows the May signing of the Korea-U.S. Shipbuilding Partnership Initiative (KUSPC), will connect South Korean shipbuilders with U.S. shipyards, technology companies and researchers.
“We will turn the $150 billion investment into tangible results and help restore the U.S. shipbuilding industry’s competitiveness,” Lee Jong-geon, the center’s director, stated.
“KUSPC is an unprecedented cooperation platform in the global shipbuilding industry and a symbol of South Korea’s firm commitment to helping rebuild the U.S. shipbuilding industry,” said Kim Jung-kwan, ROK minister of trade, industry and resources. Together with U.S. colleagues, “we will deliver results. We will build naval vessels. We will build [liquefied natural gas] carriers and we will build them here in America.”
KUSPC participants include ROK shipbuilders HD Hyundai Heavy Industries, Hanwha Ocean and Samsung Heavy Industries. Hanwha Ocean purchased a leading U.S. shipbuilder, Philly Shipyard in Pennsylvania, in 2024. U.S. military leaders hailed the acquisition as a “game-changing milestone for the new maritime statecraft” because it includes world-class leadership and innovation to foster competition and energize domestic shipbuilding. The cooperation center also is an imperative advancement for the U.S. industry.
“This is an important milestone and a major step forward in strengthening cooperation between our two countries in the shipbuilding industry,” Hyun Jung Je, senior fellow at the Korea Economic Institute, a U.S.-based think tank, said in a July 2026 webinar, “The Path Ahead for U.S.-South Korea Shipbuilding.”
Revitalizing domestic shipbuilding is a U.S. priority to enhance its maritime power and curb potential national security threats. Less than 1% of new commercial ships are built in the U.S., according to the White House. The ROK, with 27.3%, and Japan, at 13.1%, are major contributors to global shipbuilding.
China, which accounted for less than 7% of global shipbuilding at the turn of the 21st century, now builds nearly 54% of commercial ships worldwide after its shipyards capitalized on cheap materials and labor, and lax regulation, J. James Kim of the Henry L. Stimson Center, a U.S.-based think tank, testified before U.S. lawmakers in July 2026.
Many of its shipyards embrace the Chinese Communist Party’s military-civil fusion strategy and produce warships for China’s People’s Liberation Army Navy, analysts say.
“China’s military-civil fusion strategy, which blurs the line between its commercial and defense industrial bases, deserves to be taken more seriously as a potential risk,” Kim told a U.S. congressional committee. “Many of China’s largest shipyards build commercial vessels and warships side by side, sharing infrastructure, workforce and technology across both lines of production. Given the scale of China’s commercial shipbuilding dominance, the opacity of its defense industrial base, and the strategic intent behind military-civil fusion, policymakers should not assume this dual-use ecosystem is benign or immaterial to China’s naval modernization.”
