Saemangeum Development and Investment Agency, Jeonbuk Special Self-Governing Province, Gunsan City, and the Korea Rural Community Corporation signed an investment agreement last week with South Korean telecommunications firm Dreamline. The agreement will see a subsea cable landing station being built in the Saemangeum National Industrial Complex.
According to a press release, this agreement is part of the agency’s efforts to turn Saemangeum into an AI data center hub. The landing station will serve the 8,900 km Asia United Gateway East (AUG East) system.
The Saemangeum National Industrial Complex was selected by Dreamline because of its land and sea accessibility and industrial base. The landing station will also add redundancy to South Korea’s national network by expanding infrastructure to the country’s west coast given that infrastructure is concentrated in Busan and Geoje to the southeast.
The landing station will be located in Block 2 of the industrial complex with construction expected to begin in January 2027 and full-scale telecommunications services expected to be live from 2029. The value of the project was not disclosed by the agency.
The landing station is expected to benefit Hyundai Motor Group’s KRW 9 trillion (US$ 6.3 billion) AI data center, which is expected to be built within the Saemangeum National Industrial Complex. AI workloads are sensitive to latency, so proximity to the point where international traffic makes landfall is likely to be an advantage.
“With this agreement, Saemangeum has moved beyond being a simple manufacturing industrial complex to become a global digital telecommunications gateway to the world,” Moon Sung-yo, Administrator of the Saemangeum Development and Investment Agency said in a press release. “It will be a solid foundation for creating a new industrial ecosystem based on artificial intelligence (AI) and data centers, linked with advanced companies such as Hyundai Motor Group.”
“Building on the AUG East submarine fiber optic cable, we will provide high-speed, low-latency infrastructure optimized for artificial intelligence (AI) and data center operations, and contribute to growing Saemangeum into South Korea’s leading digital hub,” said Han Yun-jae, CEO of Dreamline.
AUG East will connect eight countries including Singapore, Indonesia, Taiwan, South Korea, and Japan. The project is led by a consortium of 11 firms with NEC as a supplier. NEC has not disclosed specifics about the cable, stating only that it will “feature a high-count fibre pair system delivering unprecedented bandwidth capacity” and support millions of simultaneous ultra high-definition video streams.