South Korea’s science minister has said a “sense of crisis” is gripping the country’s semiconductor industry, as the east Asian nation braces for greater challenges from the US and China in an intensifying global chip war.
There is growing fear among Korean officials and industry executives that the country will shed production facilities as domestic chipmakers, lured by subsidies and tax incentives, rush to build semiconductor plants in the US. China is also catching up fast in the memory chip sector on the back of generous state funding.
Lee Jong-ho, minister of science and information communications technology, and a renowned semiconductor expert, told the Financial Times that legislation passed last month had “laid the legal groundwork to support the semiconductor industry against severe competition from countries like the US, China, Japan [and in] Europe and Taiwan”.