Pohang: The Steel City and the Legend of POSCO포항: 철강이 일으킨 도시, 포스코의 신화

Pohang, on Korea's southeast coast, is where the country's industrial miracle becomes visible. In 1968, when Korea was still one of the poorest nations on earth, the government founded Pohang Iron and Steel Company (POSCO) here — famously starting with almost no capital, technology, or steelmaking experience. Its founding president, Park Tae-joon, drove the project with near-military discipline, and in July 1973 the first phase of Pohang Works was completed with a capacity of about one million tons a year. Steel from Pohang fed Korea's shipyards, car factories, and construction booms — which is why Koreans treat this mill less like a company and more like a national origin story. Today Pohang is reinventing itself again: in 2023 the government designated it a specialized complex for rechargeable-battery materials, the metals of the electric-vehicle age. But the city is not all industry. Hwanho Park's Space Walk, a walkable roller-coaster-like steel sculpture donated by POSCO, has become one of Korea's most photographed nightscapes — steel as art, in the steel city. And at Homigot, on the peninsula's eastern tip, crowds gather every January 1st to watch one of the peninsula's first sunrises of the new year beside the famous bronze 'Hands of Harmony' rising from the sea.