During the first Korean presidential visit to India in nearly eight years, President Lee Jae Myung and Prime Minister Narendra Modi agreed to elevate bilateral ties into an industry-wide partnership built on joint ventures and strategic coordination.
Modi pledged to establish a dedicated “Korea desk” within the Prime Minister’s Office to oversee projects and fast-track execution, while Lee offered a reciprocal mechanism in Seoul to accelerate implementation.
Kim Yong-beom, presidential chief of policy, said Modi acknowledged concerns raised by Korean firms over regulatory unpredictability and pledged to meet business leaders directly to address them.
The Indian leader identified shipbuilding, artificial intelligence, semiconductors and clean energy as core sectors for cooperation over the next decade, framing the partnership as a combination of “India’s scale with Korea’s speed.”
The summit was followed by a Korea-India business forum that drew around 600 corporate leaders, laying groundwork toward a shared goal of expanding bilateral trade to $50 billion by 2030.
The shift comes at a critical juncture for Korea’s steel sector, which has faced declining profitability amid intensifying competition from China. Attention is centered on a 10 trillion won ($6.8 billion) joint investment by POSCO Holdings and India’s JSW Steel to build an integrated steel mill in Odisha, with completion targeted for 2031.
China’s weight in global steel continues to loom large. The country accounted for more than half of global crude steel output in 2025, producing roughly 960 million tons out of 1.8 billion tons worldwide, keeping downward pressure on prices despite a domestic slowdown.
The pricing gap is particularly acute in thick steel plates — a key shipbuilding input accounting for 20 to 30 percent of vessel costs — where Chinese products are about 200,000 won per ton cheaper than Korean equivalents.
At the same time, external pressures are mounting. The United States has launched a Section 301 probe into structural overcapacity, while existing Section 232 tariffs on steel and autos continue to weigh on exports. Europe has also tightened safeguard measures, cutting duty-free quotas and raising tariffs to shield its domestic industry.
New Delhi is also pushing to scale up shipbuilding under its “Maritime Amrit Kaal Vision 2047,” with plans for new shipyards across multiple states. Tamil Nadu has moved early, courting Korean investment and selecting HD Hyundai as a key partner for a potential new yard.
HD Hyundai, through its shipbuilding arm, has already signed a memorandum of understanding with India’s Sagarmala Development Company to explore joint shipyard development, with Thoothukudi emerging as a leading candidate site.
The diverging outlook across industries, however, underscores the complexity of the pivot. While steelmakers stand to benefit from rising Indian demand and investment opportunities, shipbuilders face margin pressure from rising plate costs, particularly as anti-dumping measures lift input prices.
“Such cost pressures could undermine competitiveness, especially against Chinese shipbuilders that rely on lower-priced domestic steel,” an industry official said, warning of a widening gap between steel producers and shipyards.
The Korea-India push, in that sense, is not just a search for growth — but a strategic recalibration as Korean industry navigates between China’s scale, Western trade barriers and the rising promise of India.
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