Despite the COVID-19 crisis, South Korea's defense budget remains mostly unaffected. Budget reductions in the "2020-2024 mid-term defense acquisition plan" will be limited to programs deemed as "non essential" and to a limited number of foreign procurement programs.

South Korea might have been the country, after China, with the most reported cases of Coronavirus earlier this month, the two shipbuilding giants HHI and DSME appear to be unaffected.

The future USS Delbert D. Black (DDG 119) successfully completed acceptance trials on March 12, returning to Huntington Ingalls Industries (HII), Ingalls Shipbuilding Division after spending two days at sea in the Gulf of Mexico.