The move is a direct bid to cement the country’s position at the centre of the global AI supply chain.
President Lee Jae Myung made the announcement alongside Samsung Electronics Chairman Lee Jae-yong and SK Group Chairman Chey Tae-won, the heads of the world’s two largest memory chipmakers, in a televised address from Seoul. “We must secure the core elements of AI faster than any other country,” Lee said. “Semiconductors, physical AI, and AI data centres are the triple axis for our great leap forward.”
Samsung and SK Hynix will together invest 800 trillion won with their suppliers to build two new chip fabrication sites each in South Korea’s southwest region, with Samsung confirming Gwangju as its chosen location. South Korea’s industry minister added that the country intends to double DRAM output within five years, with new fabs in the Seoul metropolitan area brought forward to the mid-2030s.
The data centre ambition runs in parallel. Science minister Bae Kyung-hoon said South Korea is targeting 550 trillion won in AI data centre investment by 2029, scaling to more than 1,000 trillion won by 2035,a figure that would reshape the global infrastructure map if realised.
The announcement was not without controversy, though, as shares in Samsung and SK Hynix fell 4.86% and 1.68% respectively on the day. Infrastructure constraints, power, water, logistics, and skilled labour, were also cited as potential bottlenecks to delivery at the scale proposed.
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