Inside K-STAR and Korea's Fusion Industrial Base with Jin Wu Kim

Korea went from one of the poorest countries in the world, with GDP per capita under $100 in 1960, to a nation that builds the world's ships, chips, and nuclear reactors. Now it's positioning itself to do the same for fusion.

In this episode of Fusion Forward, we sit down with Jin Wu Kim of Enable Fusion, Korea's flagship fusion supply chain startup, to trace how Korea's unique industrial model, built on state-directed conglomerates, or chaebols, like Samsung, SK, Hyundai, and LG,  is now being applied to one of the hardest engineering problems in the world.

We cover:

• Korea's industrial origin story: colonization, the Korean War, and a 50-year transformation into one of the world's most advanced economies

• The chaebol model, how top-down government coordination and a handful of family-run conglomerates built Korea's shipbuilding, semiconductor, and nuclear fission industries

• The founding of K-STAR in 1995, first plasma in 2008, and 17+ years of continuous operation that's built a 200-250 company deep fusion supply chain inside Korea

• What Korea's shipbuilding, semiconductor, and nuclear fission expertise directly transfers to fusion components, and what doesn't

• The geopolitical tension between global collaboration (the semiconductor model) and supply chain protectionism, and what that means for a resource-poor country like Korea

• Why energy independence is, in Jin Wu's view, the single biggest determinant of Korea's next decade

Whether you're tracking the global fusion supply chain, curious about industrial policy, or want to understand why a country of 50 million people is becoming indispensable to commercial fusion, this conversation connects Korea's 70-year industrial story directly to what it will take to build the first fusion power plants. 

About the Guest

Jin Wu Kim is the Chief Financial Officer and Chief Commercial Officer at Enable Fusion, Korea's flagship fusion supply chain startup, which focuses on precision manufacturing and component delivery for fusion reactor developers rather than reactor design itself. Enable Fusion was co-founded by Dr. GS Lee, a foundational figure in Korean fusion who helped launch the country's fusion program in 1995 and has been closely involved with K-STAR and ITER ever since.