Basically, South Korean fell behind Taiwanese by 2015 in logic semiconductor fab after Apple began working with TSMC due to conflicts with Samsung, and now Korean players are worried their primary niche in the memory space is going to be eaten up by Chinese players like YMTC or American players like Micron. It also hasn't helped that the CHIPS act lead Samsung to heavily invest in expanding American production at the expense of its Korean presence.
For the past 2 years, Park Young-sun had been lobbying [0][1] for Semiconductor Sovereignity within SK largely due in part to YMTC's disruptive impact on SK Hynix, Samsung, and Micron HANA. She even published a Korean (and imo better sourced) version of "Chip Wars" called "Semiconductor Sovereign State" [1] that definelty did have an impact on Korean government strategy around the chips industry as a whole. Ik some of the Furiosa people helped with it, and there is an appetite to leverage RISC-V to rebuild design capacity within SK. Ofc, I'm a bit biased because I helped with some of the sourcing and due dilligence for Park's position because my former advisor is a collaborator of her's.
> What tribute Samsung or SK Hynix will have to make in order to convince the Trump administration to grant these licenses remains to be seen
Other way around.
The USITC recently ruled in favor of Samsung (and indirectly LG) that China's BOE infringed on Samsung's AMOLED IP, and as a result BOE is now banned from exporting OLED panels to the US for the next 15 years [3]. And Samsung and SK Hynix's competitor YMTC has already been blacklisited by the US since 2022 [4].
Korea Inc has been lobbying pretty well with the Trump admin, and SoftBank's Masayoshi Son (original name Son Jeong-ui) has been lobbying a US-Japan-Korea alignment for years now, as he himself became one of Korea's first VCs all the way back in 2000 after riding high on SoftBank's telco success in Japan in the 1990s.
alephnerd•50m ago
Basically, South Korean fell behind Taiwanese by 2015 in logic semiconductor fab after Apple began working with TSMC due to conflicts with Samsung, and now Korean players are worried their primary niche in the memory space is going to be eaten up by Chinese players like YMTC or American players like Micron. It also hasn't helped that the CHIPS act lead Samsung to heavily invest in expanding American production at the expense of its Korean presence.
For the past 2 years, Park Young-sun had been lobbying [0][1] for Semiconductor Sovereignity within SK largely due in part to YMTC's disruptive impact on SK Hynix, Samsung, and Micron HANA. She even published a Korean (and imo better sourced) version of "Chip Wars" called "Semiconductor Sovereign State" [1] that definelty did have an impact on Korean government strategy around the chips industry as a whole. Ik some of the Furiosa people helped with it, and there is an appetite to leverage RISC-V to rebuild design capacity within SK. Ofc, I'm a bit biased because I helped with some of the sourcing and due dilligence for Park's position because my former advisor is a collaborator of her's.
> What tribute Samsung or SK Hynix will have to make in order to convince the Trump administration to grant these licenses remains to be seen
Other way around.
The USITC recently ruled in favor of Samsung (and indirectly LG) that China's BOE infringed on Samsung's AMOLED IP, and as a result BOE is now banned from exporting OLED panels to the US for the next 15 years [3]. And Samsung and SK Hynix's competitor YMTC has already been blacklisited by the US since 2022 [4].
Korea Inc has been lobbying pretty well with the Trump admin, and SoftBank's Masayoshi Son (original name Son Jeong-ui) has been lobbying a US-Japan-Korea alignment for years now, as he himself became one of Korea's first VCs all the way back in 2000 after riding high on SoftBank's telco success in Japan in the 1990s.
[0] - https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=g4YU4KwJAXM
[1] - https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=u7ERB8c13Vo
[2] - https://m.blog.naver.com/nanambook/223316051806
[3] - https://www.oled-info.com/us-itc-ban-import-boes-amoled-pane...
[4] - https://www.reuters.com/technology/biden-blacklist-chinas-ym...