Thoughts on Korean Business by Don Southerton

  Listen to the audio version Korea-US Trade & Investment Intelligence Briefing Wednesday, July 8, 2026 We offer this Briefing daily, as well as a Sunday 'Week in Review,' plus special updates most Saturdays. HEADLINE Samsung and SK's record 800 trillion won (about 522 billion dollars) domestic Korean chip build-out is becoming the flashpoint in Washington's push to move more Korean manufacturing onto US soil. TOP STORY The two chipmakers' plan to anchor Korea's southwestern semiconductor belt is now read as a test of the US relationship. Officials warn the Trump administration, focused on domestic manufacturing, may lean harder on Samsung and SK Hynix to expand US fabs, echoing Trump's earlier threat of up to 100 percent tariffs on chipmakers that do not build stateside. TRADE & TARIFF The base, across the board, 10 percent Section 122 tariff is set to expire around July 24, 2026. It was ruled unlawful by the Court of International Trade in May and ...

  Listen to the audio version Investor 101: Feast or Famine? It Has One Root Cause February was great. April and May were awful. Same business, same offer and pitch, same market. Nothing changed except one thing: in the weeks up to February, you’d been doing daily outreach consistently. Then you went head-down delivering. Outreach stopped. The pipeline dried up. By the time you noticed, it was already too late to fix quickly. It wasn’t a bad business. It was a feast-or-famine cycle, and no system to break it. I used to think this was just how business worked. Great month, dead month, great month again. Roll with it, that’s the nature of the game. It’s not. Here’s the root cause: when you’re the one doing outreach, content, follow-up, and delivery, something always gets dropped. And outreach is always the first thing to go when you get busy. Which means your pipeline only fills when you have time, exactly when you need it least. The math is brutal. If it takes 60–90 days for a lead ...

    Listen to the audio version Top headline:  Samsung and Hyundai Motor headline a combined 312 trillion won ($201.7B) domestic investment wave with Hanwha and SK. Top Story South Korea's Finance Ministry announced July 3 that Hanwha, Hyundai Motor, Samsung, and SK Group will invest a combined 312 trillion won ($201.7B) in the southeastern Yeongnam region, targeting AI, small modular reactors, and next-gen chips. Analysts warn the domestic tilt could draw fresh US trade pressure, since Washington wants that capital flowing into American plants, not Korean ones. Korean Corporate Tracker Samsung and Hyundai Motor: 102 trillion won for Yeongnam robotics, batteries, and mobility AI. SK Group: 140 trillion won toward a 2GW AI data center with unnamed overseas partners. LG Group: 9.4 trillion won for appliance R&D and semiconductor substrates. BCW Take Korea's conglomerates are betting big at home just as Washington wants that capital pointed at US soil, a mismatch that wi...

    Listen to the audio version Top story:  Korea's  chaebol  went all-in on domestic AI, mobility and defense, a 312 trillion won ($204B) wave of investment landed on top of a settled 15% tariff regime , while Hyundai posted its best-ever June in the US. The week's throughline: Korean top groups are building at home and on American soil at the same time. Chips & AI, Korea doubles down at home President Lee opened the week unveiling a $576 billion semiconductor and AI investment drive, anchored by Samsung and SK Hynix 's combined ~800 trillion won for new southwest fabs. Midweek, SK Hynix moved to list an ADR on Nasdaq (SKHY) around July 10, raising up to ~$29B to fund chip infrastructure tied to US demand, the clearest signal yet of Korea buying US capital access. An ADR represents shares of a foreign company and allows international stocks to be easily bought and traded on U.S. exchanges like the NYSE or Nasdaq. Trade & tariffs The 15% reciprocal r...

  Why Korean Agreements Keep Changing After Signing, and How to Manage It In Korea , signing a contract formalizes the partnership. The document solidifies the working relationship,  but terms are expected to change and be renegotiated over time as business conditions shift. In the West , a legal agreement is treated as immutable.  That single difference is the source of most Korea–US contract friction, and it surfaces both during negotiations and long after the ink has dried. Where the friction shows up Korean teams may request changes after changes to a Western company’s standard agreements, questioning even basic boilerplate at levels that frustrate legal counsel.  Sometimes, no changes surface early, only to be raised later once key points are thought to be settled.  Great patience may be required to walk Korean teams through Western legal terminology and to clarify what cannot be altered without breaking compliance with state, local, and international...

    Listen to the audio version February was great. April and May were awful. Same business, same offer, same market. Nothing changed except one thing: in the weeks up to February, you'd been doing daily outreach consistently. Then you went head-down delivering. Outreach stopped. The pipeline dried up. By the time you noticed, it was already too late to fix quickly. It wasn't a bad business. It was a feast-or-famine cycle , and no system to break it. I used to think this was just how business worked. Great month, dead month, great month again. Roll with it, that's the nature of the game. It's not. Here's the root cause: when you're the one doing outreach, content, follow-up, and delivery, something always gets dropped. And outreach is always the first thing to go when you get busy. Which means your pipeline only fills when you have time — exactly when you need it least. The math is brutal. If it takes 60–90 days for a lead to go from first contact to closed dea...

  A turnkey, end-to-end platform for seabed critical mineral processing in the South Pacific The Platform Already Exists Pago Pago is a working deep-water harbor, a turnkey industrial complex that will be run by government, business, and private industry side by side. Deep-draft commercial and military vessels already deliver and load containers and specialized industrial cargo, handled by established shipping and drayage companies. Around it sits a mature private-sector cluster: fuel, industrial welding and fabrication, food provisioning, electronic radar and sonar repair, medical care, and crew services. International shipping and banking are well established. A Proven Industrial Track Record Since 1954, American Samoa has been the world’s premier tuna receiving, processing, and shelf-stable canning center. Today, South Korea’s Dong Won Industries owns and operates StarKist Seafoods American Samoa , processing and packing nearly 400 tons of tuna every workday. The workforce, in...