The biggest gamble in maritime history! $7 billion "stockpiled" supertankers before the US-Iran war, and this Korean tycoon made a fortune

A war has made a low-profile South Korean the biggest winner in the global shipping market.

Last week, a supertanker named "Plata Carrier" set sail from the Strait of Hormuz to India, loaded with 2 million barrels of crude oil. The vessel had stayed in the Persian Gulf for over four months and finally departed. Its owner is Korean shipping tycoon Ga-Hyun Chung.

Before the U.S. and Israel launched attacks on Iran, Chung had quietly invested around $7 billion to build the world’s largest privately-owned tanker fleet. According to The Wall Street Journal, this bet is one of the largest single-market gambles in maritime history.

After the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, Asia’s energy demand surged, and freight rates skyrocketed. VLCC daily charters soared above $385,000 in March this year, setting the highest record for Clarksons since 2000. Chung’s fleet was in the most advantageous position.

$7 Billion "Hoarding" of Super Tankers: A Gamble Mocked by Peers

Chung’s father founded Sinokor in 1989, initially as a China-Korea joint venture container shipping company that grew with the expansion of China-Korea trade. After the pandemic, Sinokor began to enter the tanker business, but the real large-scale expansion happened at the end of last year—when ship purchases accelerated dramatically.

According to sources, the majority of Chung’s funds came from Gianluigi Aponte—the billionaire co-founder of Mediterranean Shipping Company (MSC), a container shipping giant. The container shipping boom during the pandemic left Aponte with vast idle capital. Greek regulatory filings show that an MSC subsidiary agreed to purchase part of Sinokor's equity, but specific details remain unknown to the public, and even industry insiders who had previously worked with Chung on ship deals are unaware of the full scope.

At first, veterans in the industry were shocked by this massive bet but unconcerned. They were happy to sell ships to the "newcomer" and believed that the cyclical swings of the tanker market would eventually make him pay the price. Eirini Diamantara from Greek brokerage Xclusiv Shipbrokers estimates that Sinokor currently owns more than 160 tankers, nearly half of which are VLCCs—each able to transport 2 million barrels of crude oil per voyage.

War Arrives, the Bet Pays Off

In March this year, after the U.S. and Israel attacked Iran, the closure of the Strait of Hormuz suddenly disrupted the global energy supply chain. Asian economies urgently needed alternative energy resources, crude oil from Europe and the U.S. was diverted eastward, travel distances lengthened, and shipping capacity demand soared.

The result: VLCC daily charter rates soared above $385,000, according to Clarksons, the highest on record since 2000 and far above the average from 2016 to 2025.

Chung's strategy was precise. According to ship tracking agency Kpler, he had pre-deployed VLCCs near the Strait of Hormuz before the conflict broke out, and during the early stages of the war, he leased them as floating storage facilities. Later, some tankers shuttled short distances between inside and outside the strait, transferring crude oil to ports outside the Gulf and then transferring cargo to other ships for onward transport to Asia.

In addition, sources said that Sinokor’s derivatives trading team simultaneously bought and sold paper contracts linked to the freight market, profiting alongside the rise in shipping rates.

Low-profile Tycoon, Mysterious Moves

In an industry full of flamboyant personalities, Chung is an outlier. Born to a Korean shipping family, he deliberately avoids the media and rarely appears in public.

Executives who have dealt with him describe Chung as a judo enthusiast who prefers to establish large groups on WhatsApp to discuss market trends with other shipowners.

His name has recently become a hot topic at a shipping industry conference in Athens—he was spotted at a late-night party with a cigar in hand, surrounded by bodyguards.

The Next Market Move: Strait of Hormuz Reopens, Demand Rises Again
Although tanker freight rates have fallen back from the wartime peak, they remain high. Shipping veterans anticipate that more complex trade routes and high charter rates will persist for some time after the conflict.

A week after President Trump signed a peace agreement with Iran, the "Plata Carrier" set sail from waters near the UAE, passing through the Strait of Hormuz. As of last Thursday, the ship had bypassed southern India and was heading to a large refinery on India’s east coast.

The reopening of Hormuz means a surge of Persian Gulf crude oil exports, driving up tanker demand again. Chung’s fleet is once again at the forefront.

Lessons from the Past: Market Monopoly Is Not Without Risk

Of course, this path has precedents and is not without risks.

Industry sources believe Chung's underlying logic is that a single player, if they control a large enough fleet, can push up freight rates by controlling transport capacity. Realistic factors supporting this logic include: no single dominant shipowner among large Greek, Nordic and Asian companies; some tankers are shifting to the “dark fleet” transporting sanctioned crude, shrinking mainstream market capacity; and regulators find the opaque second-hand ship market difficult to track, let alone intervene.

But history offers a warning. In the 2000s, Taiwanese tycoon Nobu Su made a fortune controlling a large bulk carrier fleet (for coal and iron ore), and then tried to replicate the strategy in the tanker market, only to suffer heavy losses in the 2008 global financial crisis.

Chung’s bet appears to be working for now. But the market is, after all, the market.