USS Hickox (DD-673) was a Fletcher-class destroyer of the United States Navy. She was launched on 4 July 1943 and commissioned on 10 September 1943. William M. Sweetser became her captain that day.
Her shakedown took place in the Caribbean. She left Norfolk, Virginia, on 21 November and reported at Pearl Harbor on 12 December. On 16 January 1944 she sailed with the destroyer screen of Admiral Marc Mitscher's fast carrier task force, which operated as Task Force 58 under the Fifth Fleet and later as Task Force 38 under Admiral William F. Halsey's Third Fleet.
On 17 December a typhoon struck the Philippines. The wind was judged at 115 knots, strong enough to take her steering away. She got power and helm back, and on 23 December she brought a group of tankers into Ulithi.
She rejoined Task Force 58 on 1 February 1945. On 29 May she headed for home by way of Guam, San Pedro, and Pearl Harbor. On 6 July she passed under the Golden Gate Bridge for repairs, the first she had undergone since leaving the United States a year and a half earlier. Hickox was still in the yard when the Pacific war ended on 2 September and the armistice was signed in Tokyo Bay. She had come through the war. On 10 December 1946 she decommissioned and entered reserve at San Diego.
On 19 May 1951 Hickox recommissioned. Newport, Rhode Island, became her home port in the Atlantic Fleet when she arrived on 13 October. Coastal and Caribbean drills followed. On 6 September she sailed with Destroyer Squadron 20 on a voyage around the world. The squadron reached Newport again in April 1953. Homeward they called at Singapore, then Calcutta, Ceylon, Naples, and Gibraltar, and the cruise had run seven and a half months.
On 8 September 1954 she began a five-month cruise to northern Europe and the Mediterranean, given over largely to NATO exercises, fleet maneuvers, and goodwill visits. She returned to the United States on 7 February 1955. The summer of 1957 brought another trip to the Mediterranean, and she stayed in the eastern part of that sea after plotters tried to overthrow King Hussein of Jordan, ready to keep the trouble from spreading. Back on 30 August, she moved to Philadelphia two weeks later and decommissioned on 20 December 1957 into the Atlantic Reserve Fleet.
South Korea took her over on 15 November 1968. In the Republic of Korea Navy she served as ROKS Busan, named for the city of Busan. That ship was stricken and went to scrap in 1989. Hickox received nine battle stars for the Second World War and two more for wartime service that came later.