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Korea needs new strategy to keep semiconductor supremacy
The U.S. and Japan have agreed to jointly develop 2-nanometer semiconductors. The 2-nm chips are so advanced that even the world's memory chip frontrunners, such as Samsung Electronics and TSMC, do not have the technology to mass produce them. Japanese media outlets reported that "the U.S.-Japanese alliance aims to develop cutting-edge semiconductors ahead of their Korean and Taiwanese competitors." The world's largest and third-largest economies want to build a semiconductor chain by reducing their dependence on Korea and Taiwan.
The U.S., which has some of the world's top semiconductor companies, including Intel, Nvidia, and AMD, is the strongest player in non-memory chip design and development. Japan ceded its top rank in the memory chip market to Korea in the mid-1990s, but still has many key source technologies for semiconductor manufacturing processes. Suppose the two countries join forces and start developing the most advanced memory chips. In that case, they will have an enormous competitive edge. Korea's memory semiconductor hegemony, which has been maintained since 1993, could be shaken.
The global semiconductor industry has passed the stage of competition among companies and countries and entered an era of contests among international alliances. In the European Union, member countries also are forming a united front to increase their semiconductor self-sufficiency ratio to 20 percent by 2030. Taiwan is expanding its production facilities in the U.S. and building manufacturing plants and R&D centers in Japan. Companies and countries are uniting and splitting with one another ceaselessly to gain the upper hand in the semiconductor industry, the key strategic asset in the technology war.
In this industrial megatrend, Korea's semiconductor sector is struggling with domestic troubles. There are various problems, including residents' protests, securing plant sites, a shortage of workers, and regulations on university enrollment quotas. The U.S. has tolerated Korea's occupation of 70 percent of the world's DRAM semiconductor market share, judging that it does not harm America's strategic interests. The U.S. stance is now changing. If Korea is alienated from the new U.S.-led chipmaking alliance, its semiconductor makers could collapse as their Japanese counterparts did four decades ago.
