South Korea has laid out a sweeping industrial strategy focused on semiconductor chips and artificial intelligence projects, as President Lee Jae-myung pledges to cement industry leadership with investments of hundreds of billions of dollars over several years.

Flanked by the heads of the world’s two biggest memory chipmakers, Lee cast the initiative on Monday as a “great leap forward” centered on the “triple axis” of semiconductors, physical AI and data centers. “We must secure the core elements of AI faster than any other country,” the president said in a televised address.

The world’s two largest memory chipmakers, Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix, will invest 800 trillion won ($518 billion) with suppliers to build two new chip fabrication sites each in South Korea’s southwest, Industry Minister Kim Jung-kwan said. Lee said the southwestern city of Gwangju and South Jeolla province will also invest 5 trillion to 20 trillion won ($3.2 billion to $13 billion) in the projects.

Kim said a further 81 trillion won ($52.5 billion) is expected to be invested for a chip-packaging cluster in the Chungcheong area near Seoul. The government also unveiled plans to build AI data centers in the region, backed by 550 trillion won ($356 billion) in investments from the SK Group, GS Group and Naver.

“By 2035, an additional 10-gigawatt AI data center will be built with a total investment exceeding 18.4 gigawatts and 1,000 trillion won,” or $648 billion, Science Minister Bae Kyung-hoon announced.

The opposition has criticized the plan, arguing that the government’s decision to locate a second semiconductor cluster in Honam, the traditional electoral stronghold of his liberal Democratic Party, is driven more by regional politics than by industrial logic. They have accused the government of pressuring memory chipmakers to invest in the region to bolster political support rather than allowing companies to choose the most commercially viable locations.

Source: www.aljazeera.com