South Korea’s shipbuilding industry is profitable again. That alone is not unusual. Shipbuilding has always been cyclical. Years of weak pricing, excess capacity and losses are eventually followed by tighter yards, higher vessel prices and a recovery in margins. What is unusual about the current cycle is what has emerged around it. Commercial ship prices remain elevated. LNG carriers and other high-value vessels continue to support Korean yards. At the same time, the deterioration of the U.S. shipbuilding industrial base has turned shipbuilding into a national-security issue. Competition with China is increasingly being fought not only through semiconductors, batteries and artificial intelligence, but also through merchant fleets, naval capacity, ports, logistics and the industrial ability to build and repair ships. And now another possibility is appearing: Korean shipbuilders may be able to extend offshore engineering capabilities into AI infrastructure, including floating data ...
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