Standing at the Hanwha Philly Shipyard on Aug. 26, President Lee Jae-myung cast a new joint shipbuilding initiative as more than a commercial venture. It was, he said, a marker of South Korea’s willingness to invest in American industry and of Washington and Seoul’s evolving economic alliance.

At the christening of the State of Maine, a multipurpose vessel commissioned by the U.S. Maritime Administration, Lee invoked what he called the “MASGA Project” — short for “Make America’s Shipbuilding Great Again.” The scheme, he argued, would allow “Korean and American shipbuilding to rise together and deliver win-win results.”

Hanwha’s acquisition of the Philadelphia yard last December, the first time a Korean company has taken control of an American shipbuilder, has become a symbol of this ambition. The site is widely credited with helping to unlock recent progress in fraught tariff negotiations between the two governments.

Lee linked the yard’s past to his country’s present. Ships launched there once ferried supplies during the Korean war; today, he said, South Korea’s own shipbuilding prowess — forged out of hardship — is ready to buttress American maritime security and help revive U.S. industry. “Just as Korean workers once built the miracle of K-shipbuilding on empty fields,” he declared, “Korea and the United States together can now forge the miracle of MASGA.”

The president presented the initiative as part of an alliance shifting from one rooted in security to one increasingly defined by economics and technology. At a White House summit a day earlier he had pressed U.S. President Donald Trump to back the project, portraying it as a chance to “restore a vanished dream.”

Lee’s appearance in Philadelphia, less than 24 hours after his meeting with Trump, was read in Seoul and Washington alike as a deliberate show of intent: South Korea means to anchor itself not just as a military ally but as an industrial partner.

He was joined by his industry and foreign ministers, senior aides, and Hanwha executives. From the American side, Pennsylvania’s governor, Josh Shapiro, and Senator Todd Young attended, though speculation that the vice president or a cabinet secretary might turn up proved unfounded.
The Philadelphia yard, founded in 1801 as a naval facility and privatized in 1997, has long been entwined with America’s maritime fortunes. Whether Hanwha’s stewardship and the MASGA banner can deliver a genuine revival remains uncertain. But for Lee, the symbolism was the point: a shipyard once linked to Korea’s survival is now being recast as the stage for a “win-win” economic alliance.
Source: The Chosun Daily