The lighting of Pohang Steel’s No. 1 blast furnace

Roh Jeong-tae

The author is a writer and senior fellow at the Institute for Social and Economic Research. 

On the morning of June 8, 1973, Pohang Iron and Steel Company — now Posco — President Park Tae-joon faced a defining moment. That day marked the first ignition of the company’s newly completed No. 1 blast furnace.
  
Holding a lighting rod in his hand, Park inserted it into the furnace tuyere. Moments later, flames roared to life. The heart of Korea’s steel industry had begun to beat. In the history of the nation’s industrialization, the symbolic significance of that spark rivaled the fire that Prometheus stole from the gods and delivered to humanity in Greek mythology.
 
Steel has long been called the “rice of industry.” Just as cooking rice requires a hearth and a pot, steelmaking requires a mill and a blast furnace. If the steel mill was the hearth, the blast furnace was the pot.
 
Former President Park Chung Hee was firmly committed to building a modern steel industry, but Korea lacked both capital and technical expertise. Despite those obstacles, the steelmaking chief and his employees pressed ahead with extraordinary determination. They famously pledged that if the project failed, they would march to Yeongil Bay and throw themselves into the sea. Their resolve helped complete the steelworks in just three years, far faster than the four to five years normally required.
 
The following dawn, on June 9, the furnace began producing streams of molten iron. Park and his employees celebrated together as red-hot metal poured from the furnace. It was a moment that opened a new chapter in Korea’s industrial development. For that reason, June 9 is now commemorated as “Steel Day.”
 
The No. 1 blast furnace had an internal volume of 1,660 cubic meters (438,525 gallons). Even by the standards of the time, it was not especially large. Compared with today’s giant furnaces, it was only about one-third the size.
 
Yet the small furnace continued producing molten iron for more than 48 years. During its lifetime, it generated 55.2 million tons of molten metal. As that steel flowed into factories, shipyards and construction sites, Korea was transformed. A developing country that ranked outside the world’s top 30 economies by GDP rose into the top tier of global economies.

The achievement remains one of the most remarkable stories of industrialization in modern history. A small nation on the eastern edge of Asia, once under colonial rule, emerged as a leading industrial economy within a generation.
 
“You have achieved a feat that will be remembered in history. To me, you are lifesavers.”
 
Those were the words Park Tae-joon offered to employees after the successful start of production. Many Koreans continue to share that sense of gratitude.
 
The aging furnace eventually fell victim to changing economic realities. Facing growing competition from lower-cost producers in China and other developing countries, the No. 1 blast furnace ceased operations on Dec. 29, 2021.
 
The fire inside the furnace may have gone out, but the spirit it symbolized should not. The spark that helped launch Korea’s industrial rise must continue to burn in new industries and in the hands of future generations.


This article was originally written in Korean and translated by a bilingual reporter with the help of generative AI tools. It was then edited by a native English-speaking editor. All AI-assisted translations are reviewed and refined by our newsroom.