South Korean shipyards are increasingly shaping themselves into indispensable components of the United States Navy’s maintenance and operational support network. Over the past several years, the Republic of Korea’s major and midsize shipbuilders have been steadily advancing into territory that was once the near-exclusive domain of American yards, proving their reliability, craftsmanship, and efficiency in complex naval service work. Following the trend initiated by some of South Korea’s largest shipbuilding corporations, yet another domestic company has entered this growing field with a new and noteworthy contract.
HJ Shipbuilding and Construction, one of South Korea’s established yet dynamically expanding shipbuilders, announced on Monday that it has been awarded a significant contract to conduct maintenance on a notable vessel within the U.S. Navy’s logistics fleet — the Lewis and Clark-class dry cargo ship **USNS Amelia Earhart**. This development comes as Washington increasingly engages South Korea’s highly advanced commercial shipbuilding industry to offset pressure on its own overstretched shipyards, ensuring that the Navy’s global fleet remains well-maintained, mission-ready, and adequately supported for continued operations. The arrangement reflects a growing U.S. strategy of strategic outsourcing to trusted allies with proven technical capabilities.
The maintenance agreement has been made with the Navy’s **Naval Supply Systems Command** and the **Military Sealift Command**, two branches responsible for overseeing the management, logistics, and readiness of auxiliary vessels that provide crucial supplies to combat forces at sea. The planned work on the **Amelia Earhart** will be comprehensive in scope, encompassing an extensive inspection of the vessel’s hull integrity, onboard systems, and general seaworthiness. Following those evaluations, the contract specifies follow-up repair procedures, necessary equipment replacements, and surface painting to restore protective coatings and ensure operational longevity. This project is scheduled to commence in January 2026 at HJ’s **Yeongdo Shipyard** in Busan, one of the company’s most advanced facilities, with completion and delivery to the U.S. Navy projected for the end of March of the same year.
The **USNS Amelia Earhart** plays a vital logistical role within the Navy’s support network, functioning as one of the specialized dry cargo and ammunition ships designed to refuel, restock, and resupply aircraft carriers, destroyers, and other warships during extended deployments on international waters. The vessel’s upcoming overhaul is not merely a routine service but part of a larger sequence of maintenance projects increasingly awarded to South Korean firms, which illustrates both operational trust and a deepening collaboration between the two allied nations.
Earlier this year, **Hanwha Ocean**, one of South Korea’s major shipbuilding conglomerates, completed the repair of another Lewis and Clark-class vessel, the **USNS Wally Schirra**. That milestone marked the very first time a South Korean yard had undertaken and completed maintenance for an American naval asset, symbolizing a new era of defense-industrial cooperation. Soon after, **HD Hyundai Heavy Industries**, among the largest and most technically advanced shipbuilders in the world, received its own maintenance contract for a sister ship within the same class, the **USNS Alan Shepard**. Against that backdrop, HJ Shipbuilding and Construction’s recent achievement carries added significance — it stands as the first midsize South Korean company to secure a maintenance contract directly with the U.S. Navy, indicating an expanding trust beyond the traditional industry giants.
While minor voyage repairs to U.S. Navy ships frequently take place at shipyards operated by allied nations, the momentum of these larger-scale maintenance contracts reveals an evolving and increasingly institutionalized partnership between **Washington and Seoul**. This collaboration encompasses not only ongoing service work but also reciprocal business ventures and strategic investments aimed at enhancing shipyard infrastructure on both sides of the Pacific. The synergy aligns with broader U.S. policy objectives under the Trump administration, which has sought to capitalize on America’s Pacific alliances to resolve long-standing challenges in domestic shipbuilding output, workforce shortages, and aging infrastructure.
As part of these cooperative endeavors, **billions of dollars** are being invested into modernizing American shipyards, updating production technologies, and addressing critical training deficiencies within the shipbuilding workforce. Parallel to these efforts, the South Korean government and industry leaders have actively promoted these investments under a program dubbed an initiative to “Make American Shipbuilding Great Again,” emphasizing shared prosperity, technical cooperation, and allied solidarity. At the same time, the U.S. is expanding similar forms of collaboration with **Japan**, another powerhouse of maritime manufacturing known for its precision engineering and advanced industrial ecosystem.
Together, South Korea and Japan occupy the positions of the world’s second- and third-largest shipbuilding nations, respectively — trailing only China, which continues to dominate the global market through its high-volume, dual-purpose yards producing both military and civilian vessels at unparalleled speed. Within this competitive landscape, U.S. naval leadership is increasingly recognizing the strategic value of engaging Asian allies whose expertise and industrial capacity can help stabilize and augment American maritime readiness. In this broader context, South Korea’s participation represents more than a series of business transactions; it embodies a deliberate convergence of defense capabilities, industrial modernization, and international trust — a partnership built not merely on convenience, but on shared strategic vision for maintaining balance and security across the world’s oceans.
Sourse: https://www.businessinsider.com/latest-south-korean-shipbuilder-wins-us-navy-vessel-maintenance-job-2025-12
