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Korean Shipbuilding - Under the Japanese

In 1914, there were only 4 shipbuilders. During 1917~1918, there were 15. The number had increased again to 50~60 during 1932~1932 from 30. Especially, the rise was quite rapid during 1917~1918 and 1932~1933. Powered fishing boats arrived on the scene in Korea since 1918. But it was only after 1930 that the powered fishing vessels were somewhat popularized. There were only 286 such powered fishing vessels till 1925 and the number was close to 1000 around 1930. Most of these powered fishing vessels were made in Japan.

Until 1920, Korean shipbuilders were building wooden sailing boats or repairing small cargo ships or excursion boats. But the increase in the number of powered fishing vessels gave the Korean shipbuilders the opportunity to build their own powered fishing vessels in the 1930's and this must have been responsible for the expansion of those ship yards. The localization of the shipyards in the Busan and Kyoungnam areas had become more acute. In those days, the shipyards were in very close proximity and we can say that the number of shipyards rose indiscriminately during 1920~1930.

In the 1930's, there were a lot of small-scale shipyards but some of them grew bigger in size. In 1930, the number of shipyards that had more than 50 employees was just 3 but in 1937, it became 7. But even these large-scale shipyards were just good enough to deal in wooden powered vessels.

In 1937 that a modern shipyard specializing in the making of steel-bodied ships came into being. It was called Chosun Heavy Industry corporation (now called Hanjin Heavy Industry). Chosun Heavy Industry Corporation was established on 10th July 1937 on the basis of Seo-jo Iron processing factory for ships. There are many ways to interpret the advent of this shipyard but the main point was that we came to have a modern shipyard specializing in steel-bodied ships. It is not that there was no previous record of building a steel-bodied ship, 2 such ship were manufactured in 1932, 18 in 1934 and 15 in 1935. As can be seen, there was a case of a steel-bodied ship having been made even before the advent of the Chosun Heavy Industry Corporation, but it was only an exception and in those days, all the shipbuilders made wooden vessels.

From the time of King Go-jong, the record on shipbuilding shows only the activities of the Japanese. But even in the Chosun dynasty, we used to make our own traditional vessels and as can be seen from the statistics on fishing vessels, there were more of Korean style fishing boats than those of Japanese style. From this we can conclude that our traditional shipyards were still at work but it was just that they could not make the transition to modern shipbuilding.

Near the end of the Japanese rule when the World War II was raging on, there was an upheaval because of merging of the small shipbuilders and the participation of the conglomerates in the shipping industry. The governor-generalship of the Chosun dynasty proclaimed the consolidation of the shipyards in 1942 and so those shipyards came to be designated as munitions companies in 1943. Detailed record on that is not available. Before 8, 15, from the spread of the ship repair factories that there were 65 of those dealing in ship body repair and 64 of those dealing in steam boiler repair.

After the independence, those shipyards, which were originally, Japanese, came into Korean hands. And it was the right opportunity to develop our shipbuilding industry. Korean employees set up a steering committee and took over the Japanese-owned shipyards. American forces appointed supervisors for the aforementioned companies but they couldn't' do more than just maintain whatever was there and shipbuilding activities came to a halt.

Due to economic turmoil and chaos, there were a lot of difficulties giving a kick-start to the shipbuilding. At the time, Korea was heavily dependent on the Japanese for materials and due to the inactivity of the shipping industry and fisheries, it could not even pay for minor repairs and the companies were in crisis and the engineers left the industry.