Letter From Geoje: Under the Shadow Of The Goliath

Thirty Thousand Souls, A Million Tons Of Steel, And A Robot Named Dandi

The first thing you notice in Geoje is how quiet everything is.

That might be a strange statement to make, but it is something that catches your mind. Geoje is a strange place; home to some of the largest industrial centers on earth while also being a popular tourist destination, known for its scenic views, great food, and resorts.

Before you even get to the island, you have to cross the bridge, and that is where many would get their first glimpse of what is the maritime heart of Korea. Sprawling cranes and massive container ships all stretching beyond what the eye can see.

It looks as if it goes on forever in the foggy morning; a facility that one could only begin to imagine. That isn't Geoje, no. That is the Busan New Port, a 1,800-hectare terminal port that is Korea's largest.

You only see a bit of the massive facility, of which 840 hectares are dedicated for core port operations, when you drive by the bridge. Orange cranes litter the coastline for miles, yet you could never tell how massive it is by the sounds, by how calm everything feels. It is the seventh largest port in the world, with 45 dedicated container berths out of roughly 201 total ship berths.

Its massive quay walls stretch a combined 18.8 kilometers to 30.7 kilometers across its North and New Port sectors. This immense docking wall allows it to berth up to 212 vessels at the same time, while also processing nearly 25 million TEU per year.

The Port of Busan feels like it stretches across the sea itself

That's roughly seven to eight times more container traffic than the Port of Vancouver annually. It represents about half of the total continental shipping capacity in North America, and it doesn't stop there. New berths, new piers, a new Western Container Terminal, and an expansion of remote-controlled cranes and Automated Guided Vehicles (AGVs) are all in the works.

The 2045 Jinhae Megaport Project will see the area further developed with deeper berths, expanded berthing space, and expanded logistics facilities. The new Megaport will further integrate into the future Gadeokdo International Airport, creating a unified logistics hub between air, land, and sea.

The Steel City of Geoje

I deviate here from Hanwha to make a point about my experience in Korea: scale. It is hard for me, or I believe anyone, to really speak on the size and scale of many of the facilities here; to speak of just what exactly we're discussing when we talk about megayards like Geoje.

It is a different world there, a world that operates to a level that many Canadians I don't think can truly grasp unless they go there. Certainly, I had expectations, and I had thoughts of what I would see. I went in more knowledgeable and studied up than most, saw views, site plans, etc.

That didn't help me. Not in the slightest. The moment you step on the yard, the moment you see the Goliath crane hanging above you, when you walk between the Dry Dock? There is nothing you can do to prepare for it.

For those who forgot, I arrived at a lovely resort in Geoje the night before my trip to the yard. There, I got a brief glimpse driving by. It wasn't much, but it did immediately catch my eye. From the outside, the size of everything can be deceiving. You can see some parts of it, including some of the actual yard itself. Yet only brief, little glimpses.

So even then, you aren't quite expectant of the yard itself, at least for me. After a lovely breakfast and a good morning walk, we were met by our guides and shuttled over to the yard. The whole time we were going, I still didn't know quite what to expect.

I knew the numbers and the stats going in. Covering roughly 4.9 million square meters, the Hanwha Ocean (formerly DSME) shipyard in Geoje is one of the largest on earth; the third largest, to be exact, in both Korea and the world. That is over eight times the size of our largest individual yard, Davie's Lévis shipyard, at 580,000 square meters.

Put the top five largest shipyards in Canada together:

• Davie in Lévis

• Ontario Shipyards in its entirety

• Irving in Halifax

• Both Vancouver and Victoria for Seaspan

That equals around 1.23 million square meters, and Geoje is still four times the size of all of them together. That is one yard, one of several strung along Korea’s coasts, and not even the only one on Geoje itself.

That alone is a scary number to consider, and part of why I was somewhat nervous entering. I couldn't speak to what I would see, to what kind of place I would be dragged into. When we arrived, the first thing you notice is the bicycles. Hundreds and hundreds of bicycles.

I learned that because of the scale of the yard, and how busy things can get, much of the workforce utilizes bicycles not just for getting around, but also as part of their everyday work.

Bicycle riders, for example, guide the Ship Section Carrier, massive vehicles required to move massive, pre-fabricated steel blocks. We saw several around the yard, moving around the various blocks and parts for future vessels. I also learned that the driver is also positioned underneath, which is why he needs guides to help get around.

A simple bicycle forms the unknowing backbone, as many small things do. When we arrived at the main building, we were given the rundown on Geoje itself before going to the yard.

A City within a City

Geoje is not a shipyard. That was something that I feel was conveyed to us. It is an industrial city in itself. The Yard, at its fundamental level, is divided into a Commercial Yard and a Special Ship Yard for military vessels. When we look at it more practically, the yard is divided into different zones.

Out of the massive 4,900,000 square meter footprint, the physical construction is separated into 566,600 square meters of strictly covered shops and a sprawling 1,464,000 square meters of open working area. Broad fabrication is explicitly routed through three primary Heavy Zones, designated G1, G2, and G3, which manage the bulk of offshore and modular plant construction.

Before getting into some of the other things, let me quickly acknowledge the city aspect, because I think it needs to be noted that Hanwha, and the surrounding area, have dedicated significant civic resources to supporting the yard itself. More than I was personally expecting.

This includes a fully operational fire department tailored for industrial emergency response and a dedicated on-site hospital to provide immediate medical care in the event of a disaster. There is also a limited number of housing units available on site, though I was told most of the workforce lives offsite in the surrounding area.

The complex does house self-contained daycare centers within the footprint of the yard, though. Additionally, the site sustains a sprawling network of dining facilities, operating upwards of nine different restaurants and cafeterias distributed across the complex to accommodate personnel throughout their shifts.

I also learned of the existence of Atherton International School, which was originally established in the 1980s to provide an international curriculum for the children of expatriate workers. Hanwha also maintains direct partnerships with local educational institutions, including Geoje College and Geoje Technical High School, integrating specialized shipbuilding curriculums and practical training into the schools to create a direct employment pipeline from the classroom to the shipyard.

All of this is needed, I am told, to maintain a basic level of support to the nearly 30,000 workers who call Geoje home. A number that, when you are driving and walking around, is almost impossible to imagine when looking around.

It's so quiet there. You expect lots of noise, yelling, and sound. It doesn't come outside the usual sounds of machinery. You never feel congested. You feel everyone knows exactly what they need to do, where they need to be. You get a very controlled, very calm feeling walking around Geoje. At no point was there crowding, panic, or even people rushing around. Everything felt controlled. Everything felt almost mechanical in its organization.

I also learned that for many, this yard isn't just a job. It is part of their lives. Many workers in Geoje are second and third-generation employees whose parents and grandparents have been working there for twenty, thirty, forty years. For many, the yard is part of their identity; an institution that has been part of them their whole lives, and they know will continue to be.

Even if they leave to study elsewhere, to work elsewhere, even abroad, people always seem to make their way back to the yard. They always end up back home to the familiar. I can understand that feeling; being from Hamilton and specifically the Crown Point Area, I knew many people who saw the steel mills or National Steel Car the same way, as an institution that carried families through generations, that became a natural part of life.

Not my family mind you, but others I knew were very much in that mentality, that sense of connection. The difference here is that Geoje remained while my own home... yeah. I don't think I need to go into it. You get the idea. There is a personal stake to many there. It is what they know, what they have lived, and what they have lived to work in.

The Commercial Yard and the Goliaths

With that comes a lot of other things, but we'll get into that after. The first thing we did was get a tour of the Commercial Yard, where I got my first look at Goliath. Standing over 100 meters high and 150 meters wide, these 900-ton capacity cranes are the most iconic part of the yard. They're what you see as you first enter the main yard, and they make you feel like a child staring up to the sky at them. I have never seen something like them in my life, and to think there are bigger out there is mind-boggling. You don't know the feeling of standing in the shadow of one of them, to watch them cover the sky until you've been there, but let me say it is a feeling I struggle to describe.

Beyond the Goliaths, the commercial yard relies on a layered network of secondary lifting equipment to maintain production flow. The dock areas are supported by multiple 50-ton to 200-ton jib cranes, along with 60-ton traveling tower cranes.

Hanwha recently initiated a $451 million plan to expand the yard at Geoje, something I only learned while there. This expansion includes the acquisition of a new Floating Drydock, and accompanying infrastructure as well as a new 2,600-Ton Leg Encircling Crane, additional quays, expanded slipways, and new indoor infrastructure, including the construction of a new dedicated hall in their Special Ship Area to accommodate larger submarines and surface vessels being planned.

That hall was only completed in October, and is absolutely massive. It is also, as I am told, representative of what Hanwha views as the future of shipbuilding, and what a Hanwha facility in Canada, be that a maintenance facility or somewhere like Ontario Shipyards, could look like.

The hall itself is a climate-controlled facility capable of constructing two vessels simultaneously. The focus now is on surface vessels, but they could also do submarines if needed.

Production within the plant is heavily automated, utilizing specialized thin-plate processing technologies designed to prevent hull deformation and maximize the hydrodynamic performance of the vessels. The hall is further optimized through an AI-based facility and energy management platform that is designed to monitor environmental conditions, limit equipment loss, and maximize efficiency.

It also, apparently, is equipped with twin 300-ton cranes—the largest of their kind for any indoor naval facility in South Korea. The facility is designed as a '24/7' operation; never stopping, never resting. There is always some work apparently going on there.

And they built this in just about a year. A single year. I nearly stopped when I heard that. A new, modern, digitally-integrated hall built in a single year... shorter than it would take us to even get through the environmental process. From approval to operation. I digress. I don't want to rant too much here. I just needed to highlight this place, cause how do we, as a country, how do we compete with that? What do they do that we can't? How does one just... do it?

Anyways, the first place we walked around after our quick drive was the main dry dock, also known as the No. 1 Dock, the largest dry dock in the world. Measuring 530 meters long, 131 meters wide, and 14.5 meters deep, it holds the distinction of being the only facility globally capable of constructing 1-million-DWT (deadweight tonnage) tankers and 120-meter-wide offshore plants entirely within the dock.

The adjacent No. 2 Dock is slightly longer at 540 meters but narrower at 81 meters. While it also supports a 1-million-DWT capacity, its dimensions are optimized for the continuous construction of ultra-large container ships, car carriers, and product oil tankers.

The primary vessels that we saw under construction were the Railotech-designed Yamalmax-class, a series of Arc7 LNG Carriers, perhaps among the most unique vessels on the planet. These specific vessels are destined to support the Arctic LNG 2 development in Siberia. The dock can support several large vessels at a time, something you get a good sight of as you walk across the dock.

Yes, you can walk across, lol. I got a chance to, and got a picture! It is absolutely massive, I should reiterate again. You look down and you feel you're standing on top of a tower. The people below can be barely recognizable. I am also told that a lot of fish end up in the dry dock, where they eventually get collected and used as bait to support the local fishing industry. Fun fact!

Seeing several massive carriers under construction side by side is a sight to behold, especially standing in the middle of it all. That's just one of the Dry Docks mind you; there is still a second one, and three floating dry docks designated as RD-3, RD-4, and RD-5. Add on a fourth that, as we mentioned, is under construction. That is the scale of this yard, and the focus so far is on only one part.

I've purposefully been ignoring the elephant in the room, because I wanted to take the time to highlight the yard. I wanted to speak about it in itself before talking about the KSS-III. Unfortunately, I got there as the current one under construction was outside! So I did not get the inside look, nor the comparison between her and the KSS-I there.

Unfortunately, there is only so much I can speak on the submarine itself from what I saw. She's massive, more than I thought. The Vickys are also bigger than average for what's around, and she feels like she is so much bigger than even them. She is beautiful though, gorgeous. I was able to get decently close, but for safety and confidentiality reasons won't share exactly what I saw. We also got some glimpses of the third Batch-II under construction.

I was happy to see her, to peek at a KSS-III with my own eyes. To see her up close, almost enough to reach out and feel her. She commanded such a presence, and yet I don't fully know why. She is just a ship after all, as my mother would say, yet something about her captivated me. Something about seeing things up close like that captivates me, fills me with a childlike wonder locking eyes to her.

Automation and The Smart Yard

Speaking of construction, you'll be surprised at how automated the yard really is. The whole of Geoje is operated in a digitally-integrated environment, with renewed efforts on advancing new technologies like Digital Twins, AI, and Autonomous systems. This is handled through the company's Smart Yard Operation Center, which currently automates and monitors up to 70% of the existing shipyard.

The yard's indoor block assembly lines currently operate at an automated welding rate of ~70 percent, with a strategic goal of achieving fully unmanned indoor welding by 2030.

To achieve this goal, the yard deploys fleets of highly specialized robots tailored for different structural environments. For large-scale exterior structural assembly, the yard utilizes the block welding robot, Dandi. A fun fact: a single operator can manage up to 10 such robots at a time!

To handle the intricate and physically hazardous tasks of joining steel plates from inside confined hull spaces, the yard relies on a series of specialized, compact mobile robots named Rondi, Indy, and Caddy.

Rondi, for instance, is a 17-kilogram portable robot capable of executing continuous welds that generate localized temperatures up to 5,000 degrees Celsius, performing at the baseline proficiency of a third-year human welder.

Much of this technology, I'm told, will be included in future Canadian facilities and in cooperation with Ontario Shipyards. Having a chance to see the various robots in operation, and to talk around to folks, I was highly impressed by just how hands-off much of the welding process is.

That doesn't mean Geoje lacks welders; far from it. In fact, the facility is constantly working to pump out welders. We sadly didn't get to see many of the R&D facilities on site, of which there are many scattered around the area. Our primary focus, and one I wanted to see, was training.

Among the research facilities on the yard though are:

The Intelligent Production Technology R&D Center: A 3,440 square meter facility dedicated entirely to developing production automation, machine intelligence, and future production concepts.

The ​Energy System Research Center: An 8,000 square meter facility built exclusively to run performance and endurance testing using cryogenic liquids.

The Sloshing Research Center: A specialized facility utilizing two 6-Degree Of Freedom (6-DOF) motion platforms packed with roughly 500 pressure sensors to model, predict, and counter sloshing loads in cargo tanks

Training

For us, we got a look at two primary training facilities: the main Welding Training area of the Technical Training Center, and the new VR painting training facility the company recently completed. There is also a VR Crew Training Center and a VR-Based Transporter Simulator apparently, but I did not see them.

The Welding training included both practical training and training for the use of the robotics systems we mentioned before. The curriculum features 14 distinct welding courses, with a total capacity for up to 400 welding trainees at a time. Many, apparently, come straight from school to train at this facility before going out to the yard.

The facility is massive, and the capacity is something absolutely insane. Also included are specialized programs for hull construction, electricity, painting, plumbing, and scaffolding.

Speaking of painting, we also got to see the new Virtual Reality training center for Painting. It also included VR training for grinding and blasting, so you know.

The facility itself does have physical training spaces for hands-on development, but Hanwha has apparently found that such training is too limited, with the harsh nature of hands-on training limiting the amount of time trainees can spend practicing and developing their skills.

Enter the VR training area, where trainees can still work to develop their skills when hands-on training either isn't available or they aren't ready for it yet.

I got to see the painting, and then a certain farmer convinced them to let us see the grinding training software. Grinding and blasting are still in development; it is a new facility after all, but the painting is ready to go. The system was very responsive, included realistically modeled equipment to get trainees used to the feel and use of the real stuff, and was notably unforgiving, lol. Trainees go through levels, each requiring a certain grade to move to the next one. Once they get through a certain number, they are then allowed to get their hands on the real equipment.

It was a cool setup, the most unique thing at the yard in my opinion.

You guys know I like training facilities and equipment, and I was impressed moreso by the philosophy they had about it, where they tried to make the system as minimal and condensed as possible, both to ensure that training facilities could be rapidly scaled if needed, but also working on portable training systems for cases where training might need to happen away from the facility.

A portable, minimal-equipment VR training system designed to rapidly scale and set up new training infrastructure wherever needed. I was very happy to hear this was a core philosophy in the design of the system, and how proud the team was. It was a level of realization and futureproofing you rarely see.

Another thing highlighted was that this is the model the company wishes to replicate in their partnerships, such as with Mohawk College in Hamilton and with Ontario Shipyards, where Hanwha has an MOU. The company hopes this new facility serves as a basis that I could see and imagine here at home. Honestly, it makes me giddy. I would love to see more minimal training facilities scattered around, tied into yards and certain places. That would be a dream when talking about upscaling skilled trades training. The facility itself isn't large, no bigger than a small office, and can train dozens of people at a time, ready to immediately go to the yard.

Final Thoughts

It was the last facility we saw on our tour, and a personal highlight of my trip. All in all, this whole tour was about two hours but felt like a lifetime. In the immediate aftermath of stepping off, of standing just at the edge of the yard, I honestly didn't know how to respond. I immediately asked someone I was with, "How do we compete with this?"

That's still my question. How does anyone compete with this? How does such a facility exist? I am used to Canadian production, at Canadian levels. To see such a place, to walk around essentially a small city. To think of the day in and day out. There is no out, I guess. Geoje is a 24/7 facility. It is always running, always working, cycling through her 30,000 employees.

It gave me a feeling I haven't felt since I was a boy walking and driving along the Hamilton waterfront, little eyes staring up at smokestacks that felt impossibly high, seeing warehouses and factories stretching across the skyline. Geoje is still twice the size of the Port of Hamilton, something I learned after talking to my mother and googling around.

My mum was a welder, so I had to tell her about the robots. She didn't like them, lol. She was an underwater welder, fun fact. So I had to talk to her about things. She doesn't like technology much though. She doesn't trust poor Dandi.

What can I say to make you understand? That's what I asked myself trying to think of how to write this. I don't know if I could ever truly explain the scale I saw; a city of sparks and cables, massive fabrication halls that felt like they never ended.

It was unlike anything I have ever seen. It was somewhere that felt like it shouldn't exist. It was a place that carried more than just the feeling of a shipyard. It was a community for people in among itself. People lived there, celebrated there. Grandfathers, fathers, and daughters all worked together under one facility. It was their life, their home, more than just a job.

It was something I don't think we have much of here anymore, places so ingrained in one's life, in the community's lives, that it becomes a home upon itself. A home pumping out up to 45-60 major vessels a year. A home that never rests.

I don't know if there is such a thing as a machine spirit, or an Omnissiah, but if there is I think their heart is there. I felt it there, felt the grandeur, the way people moved and how they spoke of the yard. It brings a certain soul and life to the docks and the halls that I can't really describe.

Geoje is a beautiful island, and the yard itself is a wonder of the human spirit. To imagine there is larger feels almost cosmic to me. I can't even begin to imagine what they look like. What I can say is that I don't know if I will ever experience such a feeling again, not for a long time, and I can't say if I know the words even now to describe what I saw. I don't think words can do it justice.

I wish you all could see it. I wish you could all walk around it. I know many of you would find the same wonder I did, and it makes me sad I can't truly share that with all of you. All I will say is that if we could pull off even half of what happens there, we could do so many amazing things that we never knew possible.