The production base is in Geoje, but the design and R&D hiring footprint is expanding in Busan
On September 3, 2026, Busan Metropolitan City signed an investment MOU with Samsung Heavy Industries for the expansion and relocation of its Busan R&D Center. Busan said the company would invest KRW 8.6 billion in a 1,700-pyeong facility in Nam-gu and recruit a large number of new employees in offshore plant engineering, R&D and related functions.
A day earlier, Geoje City publicly asked Samsung Heavy Industries and Hanwha Ocean to reconsider reported plans to expand design centers and add design hiring in Busan. According to plans Geoje City said it had identified, Samsung Heavy Industries would add about 130 design employees in Busan by 2030 and Hanwha Ocean about 400 by 2029.
Those figures need a boundary. The 130 and 400 are not final headcount commitments disclosed by the companies in the cited materials; they are plans reported by Geoje City. Samsung Heavy Industries' September 3 MOU confirms the R&D expansion and large-scale new hiring, but not that exact headcount.
About 2,000 in Geoje versus 350 in Busan: the center of design has not moved
Geoje City also put current design staffing at roughly 2,000 across the two companies in Geoje and about 350 in Busan. On those figures, the center of design employment remains firmly in Geoje.
It would therefore go beyond the evidence to say Korean shipbuilders are moving their design organizations from Geoje to Busan. A more accurate description is that they are preserving their Geoje production and design base while building additional access to design and R&D talent in Busan.
That distinction is the interesting part. Industrial geography does not have to move from City A to City B as a single block. Production can stay anchored while selected professional functions develop a multi-city hiring footprint.
There was already a pattern in 2023 and 2025
A Bank of Korea regional report, compiling earlier media reports, lists two relevant precedents: when Samsung Heavy Industries opened its Busan R&D center in 2023, about 120 research employees moved from South Gyeongsang Province to Busan; when Hanwha Ocean established a Busan engineering center in 2025, 150 design employees moved from the province to Busan.
These are historical relocation events, not today's total staffing figures. They should not be added to current headcount. But they show that expanding selected R&D and design functions outside the physical production base has been developing over several years.
The 2026 expansion is therefore more useful as evidence of a longer organizational question — where specialized talent can be accessed — than as a one-day real-estate or local-politics story.
Not every shipbuilding role is equally tied to the dock
Ship and offshore production is deeply physical. Docks, blocks and heavy equipment keep many production engineering, commissioning, quality, safety and maintenance roles closely connected to the yard.
But location dependency varies by responsibility. Design, engineering and some R&D functions still require tight integration with production, yet not every task necessarily has to be performed every day at the same physical site. The correct boundary must be decided role by role rather than by job family label alone.
The public evidence does not justify a claim that Busan is winning talent because it is a more attractive place to live, or any single lifestyle explanation. What is observable is simpler: the production base remains in Geoje while design and R&D hiring access is being expanded in Busan.
Geoje's objection is also a debate over where high-value work accumulates
Geoje City argues that if more engineering, R&D and highly skilled roles expand outside the city, Geoje risks being reduced to a production-only base. It has asked the companies to reconsider the expansion or, if it proceeds, discuss direct production hiring, training and settlement support as part of a broader local arrangement.
Busan frames the same investment differently. The city expects Samsung Heavy Industries' R&D expansion to strengthen its offshore-industry ecosystem and help retain young and highly skilled workers in the region rather than losing them to the Seoul metropolitan area.
For the employer, the question is where specialized people can be recruited. For the region, the question is where higher-value roles and knowledge accumulate. Talent Geography sits at the intersection of those two incentives.
When a region is hard to hire in, decompose the role before buying more recruitment reach
When specialized hiring is difficult in one location, ‘there is no talent here’ is not yet a diagnosis. Employers can first separate responsibilities that must remain physically close to customers, equipment and production from responsibilities that may be connected to a different labor market.
Some production, commissioning and site-quality work may be inseparable from the yard. Some design, analytics or R&D work may support a multi-site model. In other cases, separating engineering from the physical site may slow decisions or weaken production feedback. The point is not to distribute work by fashion, but to test location dependency against the actual responsibility.
The hiring question then changes from ‘why won't people move here?’ to ‘which parts of this role must be here, and which parts can be positioned closer to the talent market?’ That can change the effective size of the talent pool before the company changes the job requirements themselves.
BANSEOG VIEW
Factories do not move easily. Talent boundaries can move before the factory fence does
The current ~2,000 versus ~350 staffing split does not support a story that design has moved from Geoje to Busan. The evidence supports a narrower and more useful claim: the Geoje base remains while additional design and R&D hiring access is being created in Busan.
Regional hiring problems should be decomposed by location dependency, not treated as one labor-shortage number. Production, commissioning and site quality may need different geographic rules from design and R&D.
The same pattern can matter in semiconductors, batteries, biotech, defense and industrial plants: physical assets may stay fixed while the geography of specialized talent acquisition becomes multi-hub.
SOURCES
Primary sources and references
- Busan Metropolitan City — Samsung Heavy Industries Busan R&D Center expansion MOU
September 3, 2026. Confirms the 1,700-pyeong facility, KRW 8.6 billion investment, and plans for substantial new hiring in offshore engineering and R&D.
- Yonhap News — Geoje mayor asks shipbuilders to reconsider Busan design expansion
September 2, 2026. Source for the plans Geoje City said it identified: roughly 130 additional Samsung Heavy Industries design hires and 400 Hanwha Ocean design hires in Busan. Treated as reported plans, not company-final disclosures.
- NewsPim — Geoje asks Samsung and Hanwha for talks on shipbuilding talent
September 4, 2026. Reconfirms Geoje City's estimate of roughly 2,000 design employees in Geoje and 350 in Busan across the two companies.
- Bank of Korea — Regional Economic Report, January 2026
Historical context compiled from media reports: roughly 120 Samsung Heavy Industries research employees moved from South Gyeongsang to Busan in 2023, and 150 Hanwha Ocean design employees in 2025.
Busan's official release is the primary source for Samsung Heavy Industries' R&D investment and hiring plan. The 130/400 additional-hire figures and the current ~2,000/~350 split are figures Geoje City said it had identified and that were reported by the media; they are not presented as final company disclosures. The Bank of Korea's 120/150 figures are historical move events compiled from media reports and are not added to current staffing. The article does not claim that lifestyle preference caused the Busan expansion or that Geoje's design organization is moving wholesale.