Some alliances are written on paper. This one was spoken on a battlefield. "Katchi Kapshida" — Korean for "we go together" — is the phrase American and Korean soldiers have shared for three quarters of a century. It began as a survival pact in 1950 and has since become the official motto of the combined US–ROK forces. Today that same promise is being kept in an unexpected place: the shipyards building the next generation of the US Navy.

01 Born in the First Weeks of War

The Korean War began on June 25, 1950. Within two months the Republic of Korea Army had been shattered and the under-strength US Army was pinned into the Pusan Perimeter, the last corner of the peninsula still in friendly hands.

On July 15, 1950 — just three weeks into the war — South Korean President Syngman Rhee and General Douglas MacArthur, commander of United Nations forces, struck an informal agreement to fold Korean soldiers directly into American units. The program was called KATUSA: Korean Augmentation to the United States Army.

The first KATUSAs were recruited off the streets of Busan, given a short period of basic training, and sent to combat units as infantrymen. They reached US Army lines by mid-August 1950. At the program's wartime peak, as many as 23,000 KATUSAs served alongside American troops at any one time — two armies, often two languages, fighting as one. Out of that necessity came the phrase that captured it: we go together.

02 From Foxhole Phrase to Alliance Motto

What started as battlefield shorthand outlasted the war. The 1953 Mutual Defense Treaty kept American forces on the peninsula, and the KATUSA program never ended — it remains active today, more than seven decades on. Through all of it, "Katchi Kapshida" stayed the favored phrase of the US Eighth Army and became the rallying cry of the Combined Forces Command.

It is more than a translation exercise. The slogan signifies working as one unified team to accomplish the mission, and honors generations of Koreans and Americans bound by shared sacrifice. In 2010 a two-figure statue — one American soldier, one Korean — titled "Katchi Kapshida — We Go Together" was dedicated at the Brazos Valley Veterans Memorial. When South Korea welcomed a US presidential state visit, it chose those same three words as the official theme.

03 Now We Build Together

For 75 years "we go together" meant standing the same line. In 2025 and 2026 it has come to mean something new — and something directly relevant to American industry: the two nations are now building warships side by side.

Under a framework nicknamed MASGA — "Make American Shipbuilding Great Again" — South Korea has pledged to invest up to $150 billion in reviving US shipbuilding capacity, part of a broader $350 billion investment package tied to a 2025 US–Korea trade deal. South Korean shipbuilder Hanwha acquired the historic Philadelphia shipyard in 2024 and committed $5 billion to transform Hanwha Philly Shipyard into a full-scale warship facility.

In December 2025, the US announced that Hanwha would partner on a new class of US Navy frigates. In March 2026, Hanwha's US subsidiaries won their first US Navy work — a subcontract supporting design of the Next Generation Logistics Ship, the Navy's new light replenishment oiler. Korea's shipyards, among the most productive on earth, are being asked to help fix what US officials have openly called a shipbuilding "mess" and to narrow the naval race with China.

04 The Same Promise, A New Front

The thread from a 1950 foxhole to a 2026 dry dock is not a coincidence — it is the alliance doing what it has always done: showing up for each other where it matters most. Then the front was a defensive perimeter. Now it runs through the industrial base — steel, ships, and the skilled work that builds them.

That is the logic behind (American Spinning Works). Just as Korean capital and know-how are helping restart American shipyards, allied partnership and reshored manufacturing can rebuild America's textile and industrial backbone. The phrase is 75 years old. The mission is the same. We go together.