Pohang on South Korea’s east coast for decades pumped out the steel that fuelled the country’s economic rise. South Korea was the fourth largest exporter of the metal to the United States last year, accounting for 13 percent of its total steel imports. But the industry has faced intense strain in recent years from foreign competition. Businesses, officials and workers in the city now fear a planned 25 percent tariff on all steel imports to the U.S. beginning next month could have devastating impacts. \”If the steel industry collapses, the entire South Korean economy will be destabilised,\” Pohang’s mayor Lee Kang-deok told AFP. the city has carved out a rare place as a key industrial hub in a country beset by deepening regional inequality — and where most resources are tightly concentrated in the capital. \”For us workers, it has always been a crisis without any opportunities,\” said Bang Sung-jun, a former Hyundai Steel worker and an official at the Korean Metal Workers’ Union.
