Ulsan, South Jeolla-Gwangju forge partnership for future growth

Ulsan, home to Hyundai Motor, and the South Jeolla-Gwangju Special City, where Kia is based, agreed Monday to build a supra-regional framework for future co-growth spanning automotive, energy and cultural industries. Ulsan Mayor Kim Sang-uk and South Jeolla-Gwangju Special City Mayor Min Hyeong-bae signed a "Future Co-Growth Friendship MOU" at South Jeolla-Gwangju City Hall and also concluded a separate MOU on industrial AI transformation cooperation with leading universities from both regions.

Under the agreement, the two cities will combine their industrial strengths — Ulsan's Hyundai Motor presence and South Jeolla-Gwangju's Kia operations — to jointly develop next-generation automotive industries, including AI-driven factories and autonomous driving technology. They also agreed to collaborate on hydrogen and secondary battery energy industries to meet surging power demand driven by the government's "mega project" initiative.

Ulsan is home to Hyundai Motor's Ulsan plant, the largest in South Korea, with an annual production capacity of about 1.52 million vehicles. Gwangju has two finished-vehicle plants — Kia AutoLand Gwangju and Gwangju Global Motors — with a combined annual capacity of 720,000 vehicles.

The two cities will cooperate closely on AI-driven factory construction and industrial AI transformation through the "Ulsan–South Jeolla-Gwangju Humanoid Robot-Based Automotive Manufacturing AI Transformation Support Project." An AI-driven factory is a next-generation manufacturing system in which every stage of a plant's design, operation, quality control and maintenance is optimized by AI computing. The goal is to secure future automotive manufacturing competitiveness through human-robot collaboration and process intelligence powered by manufacturing data.

Both cities have established bases in finished-vehicle production, automotive parts companies, and AI and robotics research. Ulsan in particular boasts a cluster of more than 700 related companies, giving it a strong testbed for data and process analysis. Combining the strengths of both regions is expected to create a supra-regional cooperative body capable of driving a full AI transformation of automotive manufacturing.

The two cities also plan to deepen exchanges in culture, tourism and sports — including arts performances and sporting events — to reinforce the supra-regional co-growth framework. As garden cities each holding a national garden designation, they agreed to develop joint tourism programs linking their respective national gardens: Suncheonman National Garden in South Jeolla-Gwangju, the first to receive the designation in 2015, and Taehwagang National Garden in Ulsan, designated second in 2019.

Alongside this, the two municipal governments, the University of Ulsan, Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology (UNIST), Chonnam National University and Gwangju Institute of Science and Technology (GIST) signed a six-party inter-university industrial AI transformation cooperation agreement to advance research on key related technologies and train specialized talent.

"Together with this cooperation with South Jeolla-Gwangju, we plan to continue identifying joint projects with other local governments — such as LNG with Incheon and hydrogen energy with Gyeonggi Province — to expand our supra-regional connectivity hub," Kim said.