South Korea opens shipbuilding training centre in Indonesia

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

The centre will train up to 40 workers for a three-month period, offering welding, Korean language and safety courses, according to the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy.

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

South Korean yards have been taking on more and more overseas workers as they battle lengthy orderbooks, with slots now being reserved for as far out as 2030. 

South Korea’s shipbuilding industry currently has 15,500 foreign workers, 16% of the total shipbuilding labour force with Seoul keen to make working visas for foreign shipyard workers easier to get. 

Across Southeast Asia labourers have been sought from places Thailand and the Philippines.  Seoul has also gone further away to find labour sources, turning to landlocked Nepal, with up to 3,000 Nepalis being sought to come and work in South Korea.