President Yoon backs Korean semi companies

“Geopolitical issues have become the biggest risk for companies to manage as of late” said Yoon, “companies alone cannot resolve this problem – it is one that the nation should tackle by strengthening cooperation with and closely communicating with like-minded countries like the United States.”

The government plans to help expand R&D, gelp SMEs, strengthen the law surrounding legal protection for chip technology and set up a chip testing facility, said the industry ministry.

The Korean chip makers are caught in the middle of the US-China tech spat. They need US tech and chip manufacturing equipment but 40% of their output goes to China while China accounts for 40% of Samsung’s NAND memory chip production capacity and 40-50% of Hynix’s DRAM production capacity and 20% of its NAND capacity, according to Fitch estimates.

Last October the US started restricting the export of chip manufacturing equipment to China and said Samsung and Hynix could have a year’s grace for their China fabs.

Yoon said the Korean chip companies are caught in an “all-out war”.