South Korea Opens Indonesian Shipbuilding Training Center

Faced with record orderbooks and emerging production bottlenecks, the South Korean government has inaugurated a shipbuilding training center in Indonesia to provide training programs for Indonesian workers aiming for job opportunities in Korea.

According to the Ministry of Trade, Industry, and Energy, the center will train up to 40 workers over a three-month period, offering courses in welding, Korean language, and safety.

“In Korea, labor remains a constraint despite the loosening of rules on migrant workers over the last year,” said Stuart Nicoll, a director at Maritime Strategies International, a British consultancy.

South Korean shipyards have increasingly been hiring overseas workers to manage their extensive orderbooks, with some slots booked as far ahead as 2030.

Currently, the South Korean shipbuilding industry employs 15,500 foreign workers, making up 16% of the total shipbuilding workforce. Seoul is eager to simplify the process for obtaining working visas for foreign shipyard workers.

Laborers from across Southeast Asia, including Thailand and the Philippines, have been recruited. Additionally, South Korea has looked further afield, seeking up to 3,000 workers from landlocked Nepal to join the workforce.