Welcome to the AKBC Business Connect - June 2026
Dear Subscribers,
Two announcements this month show just how quickly Korea is moving from crisis response to long-term planning. On Thursday, Industry Minister Kim Jung-kwan launched a new permanent government and industry working group whose job is to make sure Korea never again faces the kind of supply disruptions it experienced during the recent Middle East conflict. The group's first task is to finalise a national resource security plan and a stockpiling strategy for critical minerals by July. Minister Kim summed up the shift simply: Korea needs to move from ordering things "just in time" to holding them "just in case."
We heard this thinking directly at our own Critical Minerals and Rare Earths Roundtable in Perth this month, where the Executive Vice President of KOMIR, Korea's national minerals agency, spoke about the case for expanding stockpiles. Days later, Seoul announced exactly that as formal policy. It is a good reminder that the conversations in our roundtables are not theoretical. They reflect where Korean industrial thinking is heading, often before the policy is publicly announced.
Then yesterday, Korea made an announcement that grabbed global attention. At a nationally televised event at the Blue House, President Lee Jae Myung stood alongside the heads of Samsung and SK Hynix, the two companies that together make most of the world's memory chips, to announce the "Three Mega Projects." Samsung and SK Hynix will each build two new chip factories in South Korea's southwest region, as part of a combined investment of around A$800 billion. These are the specialised manufacturing plants where the semiconductors that power AI, smartphones and data centres are physically made, and building them is one of the most complex and expensive undertakings in modern industry. President Lee was direct about the ambition: "We must secure the core elements of AI faster than any other country. Semiconductors, physical AI, and AI data centres are the triple axis for our great leap forward."
Samsung also separately outlined plans to invest approximately A$2.5 trillion across its broader business over the next decade, covering chip factories, AI infrastructure, batteries and advanced manufacturing. The government has promised to back all of this with faster approvals, new electricity and water infrastructure, and purpose-built industrial cities to draw skilled workers and businesses into regions outside Seoul.
For Australia, this matters in a direct and practical way. Building and running chip factories at this scale requires enormous quantities of lithium, cobalt, rare earths and copper. These are resources Australia has in abundance, and Korea's drive to secure reliable, diversified supply chains creates real and near-term opportunities for Australian miners, developers and the financial institutions that work with them. This is not a long-term trend to watch; it is a procurement and investment conversation that Korean industry is having right now.
Energy security in the Middle East continues to ease cautiously, though the lesson Korean policymakers have drawn from that experience, invest ahead of the next disruption rather than react to it, will shape the bilateral relationship for years to come.
All of this makes the 47th AKBC–KABC Joint Meeting in Adelaide this September more important than ever. As Korea locks in its biggest industrial bets for the decade ahead, the Joint Meeting is where Australian business gets a direct seat at that table. We strongly encourage members to register early, as this year's program will be shaped by exactly these themes.
Finally, a friendly reminder that AKBC membership renewals are due tomorrow, 1 July, as the new financial year begins. If you are an existing member, please take a moment to renew so you continue to have full access to our events, roundtables and networks. If you have been thinking about joining AKBC, now is a great time to do so. We would love to welcome you into the community.
Kind regards,
Liz Griffin
Chief Executive Officer
Australia–Korea Business Council
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