A foreign academic has advised that the Korean government should minimize business uncertainty that undermines corporate competitiveness, as China intensively nurtures its semiconductor industry with consistent support policies. Warnings have also emerged that recent controversy over relocating the Yongin semiconductor national industrial complex could increase corporate uncertainty and disrupt investment and business execution.
Baek Eun-hye, a professor at Tsinghua University's School of Integrated Circuits in China, told The Seoul Economic Daily in an interview on January 16 that "large-scale infrastructure such as power and water is essential for the semiconductor industry, and if policy debates drag on, investment speed and business uncertainty will increase."
"Korea's strength lies in corporate competitiveness, but if uncertainty grows, it could become difficult to respond quickly to global competition," Baek said.
Professor Baek, who majored in electrical and electronic engineering at POSTECH and earned a doctorate in materials science from Dresden University of Technology in Germany, has been leading semiconductor research at Tsinghua University, China's top institution, since 2019.
"It is more efficient to leave site selection and investment decisions to corporate autonomy," Baek said. "It is important for companies and the government to work together to minimize institutional risks."
The political debate over relocating the semiconductor complex to regional areas contrasts with China's consistent support policies. "China is rapidly building semiconductor capabilities through government-led investment and long-term policy consistency," Baek said. "By sustaining support that combines R&D, manufacturing, taxation, and subsidies, China has recently put full technology stack self-reliance at the forefront."
She added that "there is a social consensus that views costs and trial-and-error in the early technology adoption process not as losses but as investments for long-term technology capability accumulation."
Baek warned that "China could encroach on markets for system semiconductors, power, sensors, and industrial chips based on mature processes by combining volume, domestic demand, and subsidies. This could affect Korea's profit structure in the long term and reduce R&D investment capacity."
She also shared concerns about China achieving self-reliance in system semiconductors, particularly AI chips, unlike Korea. "GPUs are closely connected to cloud services," Baek explained. "Huawei, Alibaba, and Baidu have accumulated system design experience through long-term operation of cloud services and data center infrastructure."
"Korea has grown within a memory-centric industrial structure, so systematic system semiconductor education at the university level has been limited," she said. "In China, even those who did not major in system semiconductors are gradually expanding into the system semiconductor field based on device and circuit research."