Sunrise in Korea, Sunset in Britain: a Shipbuilding Comparison
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Copyright By Dan Patrick McWiggins 2013 The Dissertation Committee for Dan Patrick McWiggins certifies that this is the approved version of the following dissertation: SUNRISE IN THE EAST, SUNSET IN THE WEST: How the Korean and British Shipbuilding Industries Changed Places in the 20 th Century Committee: __________________________ William Roger Louis, Supervisor ____________________________ Gail Minault ____________________________ Toyin Falola ____________________________ Mark Metzler ____________________________ Robert Oppenheim SUNRISE IN THE EAST, SUNSET IN THE WEST: How the Korean and British Shipbuilding Industries Changed Places in the 20 th Century by Dan Patrick McWiggins, B.A., M.A. Dissertation Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of The University of Texas at Austin in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy The University of Texas at Austin December 2013 DEDICATION This dissertation is dedicated to the memories of Walt W. and Elspeth Rostow Their intellectual brilliance was exceeded only by their kindness. It was an honor to know them and a privilege to be taught by them. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This dissertation has been a long time in the making and it would not have been possible without the help of many people around the world. I am particularly indebted to Professor William Roger Louis, who has been incredibly patient with me over the eight years it has taken to get this written. Regular work weeks of 60+ hours for years on end made finding the time to advance this project much more difficult than I anticipated. Professor Louis never lost faith that I would complete this project and his encouragement inspired me to keep going even when other commitments made completion look well-nigh impossible. Since without his support and advocacy this work would not have been completed, any future student finding it of interest owes Professor Louis a great deal of thanks. Being in the British Studies program with the greatest living scholar of the British Empire was a wonderful experience and one of the highlights of my life. I am more grateful than I can express for that opportunity. Professor Gail Minault has been a wonderful sounding board for many intricate issues and has been extraordinarily generous with both her time and her knowledge in illuminating many areas with which I was unfamiliar. Her endearing combination of erudition and honesty, mingled with a wonderfully dry sense of humor, make her a marvelous classroom instructor; I learned a great deal about how history should be taught from watching her expert performances. I owe her a great deal for her astute criticism, unfailing encouragement, and unflagging faith in my ability to complete this project. She also has an exceptional knowledge of Austin’s best restaurants, some of which I was privileged to visit with her. Sparkling conversation mingled with excellent food is one of the greatest joys of civilization; any dinner with Dr. Minault v was certain to have both in abundance. It was always delightful to be with her and I am deeply thankful for all the time she was able to spare for me. I am grateful to Professor Toyin Falola for the insights he provided into African colonial history and for the education I received from him in the practical matters of preparing to teach an actual class. Dr. Robert Oppenheim was incredibly gracious about my Korean-language skills as well as being very helpful about the Korean history involved in this paper. Dr. Mark Metzler was very kind to accept a committee position and provided me with some most welcome encouragement about the progress of this paper. I am deeply indebted to all of these gentlemen and extend them my most sincere thanks. Mrs. Bonnie Jacobs of the BYU Harold B. Lee Library deserves particular mention since she was kind enough to let a graduate student from another university leave BYU with a suitcase full of books knowing they were headed for South Korea. What is more, she cheerfully renewed them every two weeks for six months. Without her help this project would have been much more difficult and I am most grateful for her generosity. I also owe a debt of thanks to the librarians at Daewoo Shipbuilding and Marine Engineering in Aju-Dong and the librarians at Hyundai Heavy Industries in Ulsan. Ms. Sun-Kyung Park of Det Norske Veritas in Ulsan was particularly helpful in obtaining access to Hyundai’s historical documents and I extend her my sincere thanks for her assistance. Mr. Dawoong Ham of Samsung Heavy Industries was kind enough to provide me with his history of Samsung Heavy Industries, an act of kindness for which I am very grateful. vi Among my sources, Mr. Sung Hyuk Hwang deserves special thanks for the time he took to meet with me in Seoul and for allowing me to tape our conversation. Mr. Hwang was one of the most critically important men involved in the creation of the Hyundai Ulsan Shipyard and a major factor in Hyundai Shipbuilding’s rise to world prominence. The factual insights he provided me were of great value. However, his personal kindness supersedes them. I am very thankful for his willingness to share his time and knowledge with me and hope that he will find this work a fair reflection of his accomplishments. He exemplifies the type of drive and dedication that brought Korea to the pinnacle of world shipbuilding. Messrs. Robert Brown and Ernest Woodcock were kind enough to meet with me several times to discuss shipbuilding on the Clyde and share their opinions on the decline of British shipbuilding. Mr. Woodcock provided me with a sizable collection of personally acquired material about his time as a Clyde shipbuilder and was extraordinarily forthcoming in discussing his memories of the 1960s and 1970s. He passed away less than one week after our last discussion, leaving a tremendous gap both personally and professionally. I hope that he would think I presented his views accurately. I will always be most grateful for his personal kindness. Mr. Brown and Mr. Woodcock exemplify the phenomenon of British technology transfer which allowed so much of what had been learned in the United Kingdom to be transplanted to a new and welcoming venue in Korea. Without men such as them Korean shipbuilding would have had a much more difficult time becoming established. I am grateful to Mr. Mike Brogan, Vice President of Technical Direction, Det Norske Veritas, for his insights into the workings of Scotland’s Robb Caledon Shipyard as vii well as his willingness to review parts of this paper. His assistance and advice was most welcome and much appreciated. Messrs. Kevin Robertson, Hee-Jung Park and Ho Ook Lee of DNV were very generous with their time and advice, as were Mr. Ki-Dong Park and Mr. Jeong-Seok Choi of Samsung Heavy Industries. Messrs. Richard Sutherland and David Ross of Pacific Drilling were both encouraging and gladly willing to share their very limited time with me in discussing British engineering both past and present. I am most thankful for their insights and suggestions, as I am for those of Mr. Rolf Olsson and Mr. Per-Olav Rød of Golar Shipping. In Austin, my good friends Rob and Mary Anne Wilson provided me with critically important encouragement at crucial times in this process. I am deeply grateful for their inspired advice. Professionally, I owe no greater thanks for the completion of this paper than I do to Ms. Marilyn Lehman and Ms. Mary Helen Quinn, the Graduate Program Administrators at the University of Texas at Austin. They went far above and beyond the call of duty in keeping a usually far distant student in the good graces of both the University and the History Department. Without their unfailing help this work would certainly never have been completed. My gratitude to them knows no bounds. Last, but certainly not least, I owe my deepest personal thanks to my wife, Karen, and my daughter, Constance. For too many years work required far too much of my limited time and this paper took even more of it. Despite that, they were always loving and encouraging and their sacrifices made it possible for me to finally cross the finish line. In a life that has been full of blessings, they are the greatest of all. viii While I am thankful to all those who helped me with this work, all errors, omissions or inaccuracies found herein are solely my responsibility. ix SUNRISE IN THE EAST, SUNSET IN THE WEST: How the Korean and British Shipbuilding Industries Changed Places in the 20 th Century Dan Patrick McWiggins, Ph.D. The University of Texas at Austin, 2013 Supervisor: William Roger Louis In 1965, Britain was less than a decade removed from world shipbuilding supremacy. They yet remained second only to Japan in the industry and boasted a long and proud heritage as one of the world’s best shipbuilders. South Korea, by contrast, at that time had only the barest rudiments of a shipbuilding industry and was not even an inconsequential factor in world shipbuilding. What little shipbuilding was done in Korea in 1965 was primarily concerned with wooden vessels. By 1982, the situation had completely reversed. South Korea was the world’s second- leading shipbuilder and gaining rapidly on Japan, the industry leader. Meanwhile, Britain’s presence in the industry had declined to near-irrelevance and was fading rapidly. This paper examines the technological, social, economic and governmental factors involved in that positional shift and explains how, in roughly two decades, Korea became a world shipbuilding power while the British shipbuilding industry virtually disappeared. x TABLE OF CONTENTS INDUSTRIAL REQUIREMENTS FOR MODERN SHIPBUILDING ................