To the Sea in Ships

Chung was getting ready to expand into heavy industry at about the time that he was moving into overseas construction. Well before the Park Chung Hee government set forth its policy on big-time industrialization in 1970, Chung had begun to negotiate with Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, the Japanese ship-building giant, on a joint venture. MHI, however, stipulated terms reminiscent of the era of Japanese rule: “The upper limit of the yard capacity was to be 50,000 tons and sole management rights were to be given to Mitsubishi.” In fact, in the Hyundai view, Mitsubishi’s real purpose “was to keep Korean shipmakers out of the competition in the large shipbuilding market.” ⁴⁰ Unable to come to terms with the Japanese, who doubted if the “backward” Koreans could build a really large ship under any circumstances, Chung went to Europe in search of both funds and technology.