Kansas City’s Competitive Edge for South Korean Investors

On the evening of June 24, 1950, Harry Truman was at home in Independence, Missouri, when Secretary of State Dean Acheson telephoned to say North Korean forces had crossed the thirty-eighth parallel. What began that night was a war, and then an alliance that has since become as much economic as military.

Nearly eight decades later, the United States and South Korea are negotiating their alliance in U.S. dollars. Korea has pledged USD 350 billion to American projects and may name the first one this month, reportedly a gas plant in Texas built to supply AI data centers. And Kansas City, some twenty minutes from where Truman took the call, is well positioned to support the next phase of U.S.-South Korea economic cooperation.

The Case for Kansas City

From July 21 to 23, a delegation from the Korea Economic Institute of America (KEI), the U.S. Department of State, and the South Korean Embassy visited Kansas City in Missouri and Kansas as part of KEI’s Future of Korea program. In public forums and closed sessions with economic and business leaders, the delegation engaged in candid assessments about the advantages of and challenges facing foreign direct investment (FDI).

Throughout the conversations, several sectors emerged as comparative advantages for Kansas City and the wider region in Missouri and Kansas, from civilian nuclear power to animal health to aviation in nearby Wichita. Evergy, a U.S. utility company headquartered in the city, recently stated that it has signed several large-load service agreements, most of them with data centers, and expects retail sales to grow 7 to 8 percent a year through 2030. Google is building a second data center campus in Kansas City’s Northland neighborhood, and at least eight hyperscale data centers are confirmed across the metro area. Data centers need enormous amounts of electricity, and utilities must convince policymakers that current and future demand is real before they can build. A signed contract with a company like Google is about as convincing as it gets. That is the opportunity for Korea in Kansas City. Every new power plant needs transformers, turbine components, and grid equipment, and Korean manufacturers are positioning themselves to supply a bigger portion of that market from factories in the United States.

A second point of attraction is nuclear energy cooperation, with Korean partners already involved. TerraPower signed an agreement with Evergy and the Kansas Department of Commerce in September 2025 to explore siting a 345-megawatt Natrium reactor within the utility’s service territory in Kansas. In August 2026, TerraPower named Hyundai Engineering and Construction as its engineering, procurement, and construction contractor for up to eight Natrium reactors, attaching completion, price, and performance guarantees. HD Hyundai aims to build capacity for two to three primary components per year, including reactor vessels. The Export-Import Bank of Korea is reportedly eager to support these projects, and TerraPower signed a separate term sheet with SK Innovation to develop Korea’s first commercial Natrium plant. Kansas has also hosted the groundbreaking for a demonstration reactor sited a mile underground in Parsons, though its route to selling power commercially remains unsettled.

Should either Kansas or Missouri land a Natrium reactor—Kansas City straddles both across state lines—a Korean firm may build it, Korean factories may supply its major components, and a Korean bank may help finance it. All this could proceed separately from the U.S.-South Korea investment memorandum of understanding (MOU), which outlines a formal process involving numerous federal agencies and committees. Instead, Kansas City is attracting conventional commercial investment through supply chains Korean companies already have momentum in.

Built for the Future

The city’s engineering workforce is both deep and comparatively inexpensive. Korean engineering and construction firms that build in the United States hire and subcontract locally, which makes the depth of a region’s engineering workforce a critical factor for determining project costs. Kansas City has one of the deepest such pools in the country. The metro is home to more mechanical, civil, and electrical engineers than its size would suggest, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (Figure 1 below).

Kansas City-based companies also rank among the top design firms across the country. Burns & McDonnell ranked seventh on Engineering News-Record’s 2026 list of the top 500 design firms and has been the top-ranked power industry firm in the country for eleven consecutive years. Black & Veatch and HNTB also placed in the top twenty. Three of the twenty largest design firms in the United States are headquartered in one metro, which is not true of any comparably sized region. Two hours east, the University of Missouri has engaged the Korea Atomic Energy Research Institute, Hyundai Engineering, and others in a consortium to design and license a twenty-megawatt research reactor, the largest capital project in the university’s history at an estimated cost above USD 1 billion. Its existing ten-megawatt reactor is the most powerful university research reactor in the United States and the only domestic producer of four medical isotopes used in cancer treatment.

Meanwhile, Panasonic’s USD 4 billion electric vehicle battery plant in nearby De Soto is proof the region can absorb a modern, highly advanced project of that size. In January 2025, a senior decision-maker at the Korea Trade-Investment Promotion Agency raised the idea of an industrial park dedicated to Korean firms, and Kansas Lieutenant Governor David Toland indicated the state would support one near the Panasonic site, according to the Korean-American Society of Greater Kansas City. The metro also sits at the center of the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) rail and trucking corridor, and more rail freight tonnage moves through the city than anywhere else in America. This matters to any firm, Korean or otherwise, that serves or operates within the USMCA trade market.

Animal health sciences is another area that Kansas City leads, possessing the “world’s largest concentration of animal health assets,” according to the Kansas City Area Development Council. Companies in the Kansas City area account for about a third of all sales in the global health market, valued at an estimated USD 19 billion in 2026. This overlaps with recent traction in Korea’s private sector and suggests opportunities for investments in bespoke industries with regional advantages. For example, Seoul-based Yuyu Pharma capitalized a U.S. holding company with USD 4.5 million in November 2025 to build two companion animal ventures, one of which is developing medicine and supplements for cats and dogs. Its first product reached American consumers some six months later. Korean firms poured USD 114 billion into the U.S. economy between 2021 and 2024 and supported hundreds of thousands of jobs, and this was before the investment MOU existed. In other words, whether or not Kansas City can attract a portion of the USD 350 billion investment package should not dissuade local leaders from pursuing Korean private sector relationships.

The Constraints

A chicken-and-egg problem in attracting greater Korean FDI is the absence of a Korean corporate community in Kansas City. Korean firms have historically sited where Korean institutional life already exists—Hyundai’s USD 7.6 billion electric vehicle plant near Savannah, Georgia, the state’s largest ever foreign investment, was preceded by Kia’s West Point car factory and an SK battery plant in Commerce, along with their suppliers. The Kansas City area has a modest Korean-American community concentrated in Overland Park and no significant Korean corporate footprint. As a result, Korean business leaders know Georgia, Texas, Michigan, and Tennessee because Korean firms already operate there, but not necessarily Kansas or Missouri.

That is a recognition problem rather than a size problem. Figure 2 shows Kansas City is the thirty-first largest metropolitan area in the country, home to nearly 2.3 million people. Kansas City’s labor force expanded at a 4.4 percent annualized pace through August 2025, faster than the national rate and faster than nearby metros like Dallas and Denver.

Another constraint is geography. While there are many positives associated with its location, the Kansas City metro straddles two states, and in the decade before 2019, Kansas and Missouri spent an estimated USD 335 million in incentives moving roughly 12,000 jobs back and forth without adding any. Competition between states is ordinarily healthy and is a large part of why American federalism produces responsive business climates. But Kansas and Missouri compete for firms already inside a single labor market. Just this year, Kansas approved a USD 125 million package to bring Lockton’s headquarters across the state line to Leawood. A foreign investor evaluating the region encounters two governors, two legislatures, and two incentive regimes where a competing metro presents one.

Conclusion

Kansas City offers Korean firms contracted power, a nuclear project with Korean partners already attached, three of the country’s twenty largest design firms, and an unparalleled cluster of animal health infrastructure. For now, obstacles include an unfamiliar name to Korean firms and two state governments competing over a single labor market. Private sector attachments to the nuclear buildout, the growing salience of U.S.-Korea trade for American consumers, and a state government already willing to set aside land for Korean firms will help make the region better known in Seoul.

Arius Derr is Director of Communications at KEI. The views expressed are the author’s alone.

This material is distributed by KEI on behalf of the Korea Institute for International Economic Policy. Additional information is available at the Department of Justice, Washington, DC.