Ulsan Mayor Kim Sang-uk speaks at a special lecture on "Ulsan AX" held at the main auditorium of Ulsan City Hall on Thursday, emphasizing the need for an industrial AI transformation in the city. The lecture was delivered by Ha Jung-woo, former presidential secretary for AI future planning. [Ulsan City]
Ulsan Mayor Kim Sang-uk speaks at a special lecture on "Ulsan AX" held at the main auditorium of Ulsan City Hall on Thursday, emphasizing the need for an industrial AI transformation in the city. The lecture was delivered by Ha Jung-woo, former presidential secretary for AI future planning. [Ulsan City]

Ulsan Mayor Kim Sang-uk is personally visiting companies to push for "industrial AI transformation" — a flagship policy of his current term — raising expectations that the manufacturing sector in South Korea's industrial capital will accelerate its shift toward AI-driven operations.

At 12:30 p.m. Tuesday, Kim visited HD Hyundai's Global R&D Center in Seongnam, Gyeonggi Province, where he met with HD Hyundai Heavy Industries President Geum Seok-ho and other executives to discuss ways to apply AI to the manufacturing sector, including the development of a shipbuilding-specific small language model (sLLM).

Kim proposed establishing an AI transformation pilot complex for shipbuilding design at the Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology (UNIST) and requested concrete working-level consultations on industry-academia cooperation and the secondment of research personnel. The two sides also discussed cooperation in three areas: building an industrial AI transformation pilot research complex, sharing manufacturing data and developing a manufacturing-specific sLLM.

They also agreed on the need to rally the combined capabilities of industry, academia, research institutions and government around the "Ulsan Industrial AI Transformation Council" — a body formed Thursday with 13 companies, universities and research institutions — to develop Ulsan into a national hub for industrial AI transformation.

Kim then visited Samsung SDI's headquarters in Yongin, Gyeonggi Province, at 3 p.m., meeting with Executive Vice President Heo Eun-gi and Ulsan plant head Lee Gwon-yeol. They discussed specifics of the company's Ulsan investment plan, announced at a national briefing on advanced industry development in the Yeongnam region held July 3 with President Lee Jae Myung in attendance.

Samsung SDI announced plans to invest 16 trillion won ($10.6 billion) in Ulsan to establish a global mother factory for all-solid-state battery production for humanoid robots and to produce lithium iron phosphate (LFP) batteries for energy storage systems (ESS).

Kim stressed that Samsung SDI's Ulsan plant sits on a site of more than 990,000 square meters and is well equipped with industrial water, electricity and other investment infrastructure, urging the company to move forward with its investment as soon as possible.

Earlier Tuesday morning, Kim visited the Han River Flood Control Office, where he met with Second Vice Minister of the Ministry of Climate, Environment and Energy Lee Ho-hyeon to propose the early introduction of a regional electricity pricing system and the expansion of domestically produced low-floor electric bus procurement. He requested that the average generation cost by regional energy source — including nuclear power — be factored into the overall cost structure of the regional electricity pricing system, and called for additional support for low-floor buses under the Korea Environment Corporation's second round of electric bus procurement.

"The future of Ulsan as a manufacturing city depends on industrial AI transformation," Kim said. "Rather than waiting for companies to make investment decisions, I will go directly to them, listen to their concerns and find administrative support measures to make those investments happen."


cityblue@heraldcorp.com