Highlights

• The U.S. Office of Strategic Capital has committed $1.25 billion to Korea Zinc as part of the Pax Silica initiative.
• Pax Silica is an eight-nation alliance aimed at decoupling critical minerals, semiconductors, and advanced manufacturing from Chinese control.
• Korea Zinc is reprocessing defense-critical materials such as antimony, germanium for Lockheed Martin, and gallium, which are under Chinese export controls.
• This positions Korea Zinc as essential to U.S. supply chain security.
• Washington is transitioning from funding mines to investing in metallurgical capacity.
• The focus is on refining and multi-metal smelting as key leverage points in critical mineral security and alliance-level industrial policy.

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The U.S. Office of Strategic Capital’s (opens in a new tab) $1.25 billion conditional commitment to Korea Zinc now reads less like a standalone financing story and morelike a chapter in a broader geopolitical script. South Korean reportingvia Chosun Daily (opens in a new tab) confirms Korea Zinc is a key industrial pillar of the U.S. State Department’s newly announced “Pax Silica” initiative—an eight-nation alliance designed to hard-decouple critical minerals, rare earth adjacencies, semiconductors, and advanced manufacturing from Chinese dominance.

This matters

The OSC announcement spoke in the language of continuity and access. Pax Silica supplies the missing context: bloc-level supply-chain re-engineering, not incremental diversification.

Smelting as Strategy, Not Symbol

What holds up under scrutiny is Korea Zinc’s operational relevance. The company is already reprocessing antimony, a defense-critical mineral for which the U.S. remains more than 70 percent import-dependent on China. It is supplying germanium to Lockheed Martin. It is building gallium recovery capacity—notably one of the first materials Beijing explicitly placed under export controls.

These are not hypothetical capabilities. They are functioning, revenue-linked activities aligned with U.S. defense and semiconductor demand. A U.S.-based smelter—whether acquired or built—would close a real midstream gap, linking North American mining to domestic processing and defense procurement. That is the hard part of the supply chain, and Korea Zinc knows it.

Where the Narrative Runs Ahead of the Metal

Some caution is warranted. Talk of a “fully decoupled value chain” compresses time and complexity. The proposed U.S. smelter will be smaller than the Onsan complex and focused narrowly on strategic minerals. Feedstock diversity, permitting timelines, energy pricing, and technology transfer constraints remain unresolved.

Likewise, the suggestion that U.S. Department of Defense equity participation would instantly transform Korea Zinc into a protected “security asset” reflects political reality more than legal certainty. Influence, not immunity, is the more precise term.

Why This Is Not a Rare Earth or Critical Mineral Sideshow

For rare earth or, for that matter, critical mineral investors, this is not a distraction—it is a signal. The future of rare earth and critical mineral security runs through multi-metal smelting, by-product recovery, and alliance-level industrial policy, not single-commodity nationalism. Pax Silica quietly acknowledges what markets already know: refining capacity is the leverage point.

Washington is no longer just funding mines. It is choosing metallurgists. And that’s important to note.

The Company

Korea Zinc (opens in a new tab) is the world's leading non-ferrous (not containing iron) metal smelting company, headquartered in Seoul, South Korea. It is a global leader in the production of various metals, with a strong focus on sustainability and expansion into future-focused industries like renewable energy and secondary battery materials.

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