After breakthrough in U.S. Navy shipbuilding, Korea Inc. to make chip sector push at APEC

Home > Business > Industry

After breakthrough in U.S. Navy shipbuilding, Korea Inc. to make chip sector push at APEC

Published: 26 Oct. 2025, 15:59 Updated: 26 Oct. 2025, 19:09

LEE JAE-LIM
[email protected]

PARK EUN-JEE
[email protected]

Audio report: written by reporters, read by AI

Executives of HD Hyundai and Huntington Ingalls take a photo after signing an agreement on establishing a joint engineering venture on Oct. 26 in Gyeongju, North Gyeongsang. [HD HYUNDAI]

The chiefs of Korea’s top chipmakers and shipbuilders, along with Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, are set to gather at next week’s APEC Economic Leaders’ Meeting, a high-profile event expected to shape both tariff negotiations and broader business cooperation in AI and advanced manufacturing.

One of the first breakthroughs came in the shipbuilding sector on Sunday, where the largest shipbuilders from both countries — HD Hyundai and Huntington Ingalls Industries — agreed to jointly construct logistics support vessels for the U.S. Navy and to invest in or acquire U.S. shipyards.

This marks the first time the two nations will build vessels together, marking a milestone that underscores U.S. President Donald Trump’s assertion that shipbuilding should become a key pillar of Korea-U.S. cooperation tied to the tariff talks.

Still, Seoul and Washington have been at odds over the structure of a $350 billion investment requested by the Trump administration, leading to months of back-and-forth bargaining since a preliminary accord was reached on July 31.

For Seoul, the optimal outcome would be a memorandum of understanding (MOU) signed with Washington and backed by an executive order from Trump that guarantees tariff reductions.

Japan wrapped up its own tariff negotiations with the United States on July 22, but the MOU was not signed until Sept. 4, when the two nations issued a second joint statement. The talks between Seoul and Washington are expected to follow a similar trajectory — with security provisions potentially added to the final document, including revisions to a Korea-U.S. nuclear cooperation agreement and expanded defense cost-sharing.

Notably, Korea is seeking to widen its limited rights to reprocess spent nuclear fuel and enrich uranium — a sensitive point that could be incorporated into the agreement.

Coinciding with the APEC gathering, the APEC CEO Summit will bring together some 1,700 global business leaders in Korea’s largest-ever private economic forum. Five business scions — Samsung Electronics Executive Chairman Lee Jae-yong, SK Chairman Chey Tae-won, Hyundai Motor Executive Chair Euisun Chung, LG Chairman Koo Kwang-mo and HD Hyundai Chairman Chung Ki-sun — are scheduled to meet on the sidelines of the APEC CEO Summit on Wednesday, the same day President Trump and President Lee Jae Myung are expected to hold a summit.

Running from Tuesday to Friday under the theme “3B: Bridge, Business, Beyond,” the CEO event will feature 20 sessions and over 85 speakers covering topics such as regional economic integration, artificial intelligence, digital transformation, sustainability, finance, investment and the bio-healthcare industry.

Shipbuilding in focus

Shipbuilding, which accounts for $150 billion of the proposed $350 billion investment package, has emerged as a key bargaining point. The Trump administration views shipbuilding cooperation as vital to reviving the U.S. maritime industry and countering China’s growing dominance in the sector.

So far, the shipbuilding cooperation has been limited to maintenance, repair and overhaul (MRO) services for U.S. Navy vessels. Under the MOU, HD Hyundai and Huntington Ingalls will seek a wider range of partnerships including the exchange of know-how in warship development and the establishment of a joint engineering venture on top of support vessel construction and joint investment toward U.S. shipyards.

“This MOU represents a concrete case of collaboration between Korea and the United States' leading defense shipbuilders, including joint participation in U.S. Navy procurement projects and investment to secure shipbuilding bases within the United States,” said Joo Won-ho, president of the Naval & Special Ship Business Unit at HD Hyundai Heavy Industries.

“I am confident that Korea’s advanced shipbuilding technology and the competitiveness of the U.S. defense market will generate powerful synergy,” he said.

HD Hyundai's Chung, who assumed the chairman role on Oct. 17, is scheduled to deliver a keynote address during the summit's Future Tech Forum series on Monday. He will discuss the future of shipbuilding, focusing on AI, decarbonization technologies and advanced manufacturing — alongside executives from HD Hyundai's global partners, including Huntington Ingalls, Anduril, the American Bureau of Shipping, Siemens and Persona AI.

Hanwha Ocean will hold its own event at the venue on the same day, although it is a closed-door one.

Korean shipbuilders have been actively strengthening ties with U.S. defense and shipbuilding firms, eyeing eventual entry into the U.S. naval ship market — contingent on the easing of domestic protectionist laws. Whether the summit will yield tangible progress for the regulations remains a major point of anticipation.

Chipmakers in the spotlight

Another highlight will be the participation of Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, who will deliver a special address on the final day of the CEO summit. Industry sources speculate that Huang may meet separately with Samsung Electronics' Lee and SK Group's Chey, and possibly visit their semiconductor facilities.

Their discussions are expected to center on Samsung’s memory business, as the company prepares to unveil its sixth-generation high bandwidth memory (HBM), HBM4, at the Samsung Tech Fair in Yongin, Gyeonggi, coinciding with the APEC events. A potential adoption of HBM4 by Nvidia could mark a pivotal turnaround for Samsung, which lost the top spot in the HBM market to SK hynix earlier this year.

Samsung recently secured long-delayed approval from Nvidia for its HBM3E chips, after more than a year of verification. In the second quarter of 2025, Samsung held a 15 percent share of the global HBM market, trailing SK hynix's 64 percent and Micron's 21 percent, according to Counterpoint Research, which projects Samsung’s share to rise rapidly in the latter half of the year with the ramp-up of HBM3E and the debut of HBM4.

BY LEE JAE-LIM,PARK EUN-JEE [[email protected],[email protected]]