Consul General Arrives in Boom Time for Korean Investment, Trade in Southeast U.S.

When Sangpyo Suh was South Korea’s ambassador to Pakistan, K-pop stars touring the country would stop by the embassy out of obligation.

Here in Atlanta, they don’t even notify the consulate where he became top diplomat in July.

“Since I got here three months ago, some pop stars have visited here but never called me,” Mr. Suh said to laughs during a Nov. 1 Consular Conversations luncheon with Global Atlanta.

Mr. Suh, whose mission covers six states, takes two lessons from this anecdote — that Korea’s cultural and entertainment exports can continue to thrive without government support, and that Atlanta’s Korean community is established enough to welcome some of the biggest acts in the world and keep them coming back.

“This area right now is well-known to Korea,” he said.

Indeed, with more than 100,000 people of Korean descent (some say it’s more like 150,000) Georgia is home to the third largest concentration of Koreans in the United States after New York and Los Angeles, a fact that is now helping the state attract an increasingly diverse array of Korean expatriates, students and companies.

Mr. Suh has been surprised to see friends of his from back home moving to the city. But at the core of an investment relationship experiencing exponential growth is the transformational moment in the U.S. energy landscape, particularly in the shift to electric vehicles.

Korean auto makers like Hyundai and Kia are betting big on battery-powered cars as the U.S. promotes incentives designed to boost uptake among consumers, and places like Georgia and Alabama are reaping the benefits. (Mr. Suh has met with economic development leaders in both states, including a recent sit-down with the commerce secretary of Alabama.)

In Georgia, the Korean automotive wave started with Kia’s plant in West Point more than 15 years ago, but the arrival of SK Battery in 2018 sparked the industry on a new trajectory. Hyundai punctuated the trend with the 2022 announcement of its Meta Plant near Savannah — the first dedicated EV facility for the group in the United States. At the same time, Q CELLS, owned by the Korean firm Hanwha, built the largest solar panel factory in North America in Dalton. All of the above companies have committed to multibillion-dollar projects in the state.

Mr. Suh believes the gravity of this moment is why his tenure in Pakistan was cut about six months short of the normal three years.

“Headquarters asked me to move to Atlanta because Atlanta is right now a hot place for global business,” he said during the event at Miller & Martin PLLC Nov. 1. “I think that I needed to care for Korean investment here. My experience, through my whole diplomatic career, was dedicated to economic and trade issues.”

While admittedly new to the role, he has heard only positive things about the business environment in the Southeast, and nothing about the very real tensions that simmered over the Inflation Reduction Act last year.

“When I meet the Korean companies who have invested here, they don’t complain anything to me,” Mr. Suh said.

What Korean companies have expressed some worry about is the ability to hire in a region adding thousands of jobs even as it faces a shortage in skilled workers. Georgia’s Quick Start program is training the workers who will run machinery at Hyundai’s plant, but some economic developers are concerned that suppliers down the line will have trouble filling their rolls.

Mr. Suh, meanwhile, is not altogether new to Atlanta. As a newly minted young diplomat, he spent time here in 1995 studying political science at Georgia State University.

The city he left is almost unrecognizable from the one he sees now, he said. Midtown in particular, where the Consular Conversations event was held, has completely changed, he said with the skyline of the area in view out the 21st-floor window. Yet Atlanta has retained some of its cost advantage over the Northeast and the West Coast.

“My life in Atlanta feels very comfortable and friendly — it’s the same for other Koreans. That’s why it’s the first choice when they decide to move to the United States, they think about Atlanta.”

Korean, he said, is the third most commonly spoken non-English language in homes across Georgia, he said, and more and more Americans are studying Korean simply to get to know the culture better, not for job opportunities like students in Pakistan looking to emigrate for job opportunities.

This burgeoning community and broader economic factors have led state leaders to court relationships at the highest levels with Korean government.

Just after Mr. Suh arrived in Atlanta, U.S. Sen. Jon Ossoff, who has visited Korea on economic missions, traveled with a delegation of five other senators to Asia, meeting with Korean President Yoon Suk-Yeol.

Republican Gov. Brian Kemp, who made Korea a priority during his first term by taking his inaugural economic mission to the country, accepted the Van Fleet Award from The Korea Society on behalf of the Georgia Department of Economic Development in a ceremony in New York in September.

All this comes as Korea aims to capitalize on its longstanding alliance with the U.S. at a time of trade tension in Asia. Mr. Suh said relations with Japan, another U.S. ally with whom Korea has had historical enmity, have improved, particularly after the trilateral summit between presidents Biden and Yoon and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida.

China, as always, was in the background of such talks. Korea, Mr. Suh says, has seen its companies succeed there, even as they have pursued closer ties with the U.S. with the federal government adopting industrial policy incentivizing domestic investment in chips, cars, batteries and other strategic sectors.

Mr. Suh did his best to promote the southeastern city of Busan in its World Expo 2030 bid, citing Korea’s technological advancements.

“Korea is the country to show our world what it will be like in 20-30 years, especially with Korea’s focus on its alliance with the United States. In high-tech and AI, we can show perfectly that scene.”

Later in November, it was announced that Riyadh had edged out Busan and Rome, returning the world’s fair to the Middle East for the second time in a decade. (Dubai held the 2020 expo).

Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport sponsored the event, and Partnership Gwinnett, presenting sponsor of Global Atlanta’s Korea channel and monthly newsletter, was represented.

Learn more about the Korean Consulate General in Atlanta here.

Contact the Georgia Department of Economic Development’s office in Korea, which has been in place since 1985 (Korean language link).

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