South Korea is treating India less as a future consumer market than as a potential secondary industrial and logistics platform, but the success of that strategy will depend on whether long-standing regulatory and execution problems in India can be reduced enough for Korean firms to scale operations there.

President Lee Jae Myung’s April visit to India produced a broad package of agreements spanning shipbuilding, ports, industrial cooperation, semiconductors, digital infrastructure and energy supply chains.

While earlier ROK-India summits often emphasized political symbolism and future potential, the latest round of agreements focused more heavily on industrial implementation, supplier ecosystems and