HD Hyundai has become the world’s first shipbuilder to build and deliver 5,000 ships, marking just over half a century since its first vessel delivery in 1974.
The 5,000th vessel delivered by HD Hyundai was the Diego Silang, the second offshore patrol vessel built for the Philippine Navy.
Since delivering its first vessel—the 260,000 dwt Atlantic Baron VLCC (pictured)—in 1974, HD Hyundai has provided ships to more than 700 shipowners across 68 countries.
In detail, HD Hyundai Heavy Industries has delivered 2,631 vessels, HD Hyundai Mipo has delivered 1,570 vessels, and HD Hyundai Samho has delivered 799 vessels.
Crunching the numbers, HD Hyundai said that assuming an average vessel length of 250 m, the combined length of all the ships they have built works out at more than 140 times the height of Mount Everest.
HD Hyundai chairman Chung Kisun stated, “Our 5,000-vessel milestone represents the pride of Korea’s shipbuilding industry and the history of bold challenges that have reshaped the global maritime paradigm.”
Chung is the grandson of Chung Ju-Yung, HD Hyundai’s founder. Born in 1915 to an impoverished family, Chung was the eldest of eight, hailing from Asan in what would become the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK).
After a tough upbringing, Chung fled the rural poverty of the north for the burgeoning commercial city of Seoul aged just 16. He financed his 200 km trek by selling one of his father’s cows. That life-long guilt would prompt him to send 1,500 cattle to North Korea as a humanitarian gesture in 1998.
By 1937 he had saved enough cash to set up a rice shop. However, Korea’s colonial masters, the Japanese, shut this business down. Undeterred, he became a truck driver, running a delivery service before establishing a car repair garage. After the end of World War II and Korea’s liberation, aged 31, he founded the Hyundai empire, which would encompass construction, engineering and cars by the end of the 1960s.
Then in 1972, Chung took a gamble. He booked an order for a VLCC for C.T. Tung, one of Hong Kong’s preeminent shipowners, before he had even built his own shipyard. Despite this the vessel, pictured above, delivered on time. The shipbuilding division of HHI was born and South Korea was on track to overhaul Japan as the world’s top shipbuilding nation less than three decades later.
