Korea, the United States and Japan should build a trilateral cooperation framework in advanced sectors such as semiconductors and energy to secure leadership in technology and infrastructure amid intensifying global competition for artificial intelligence (AI) supremacy, experts said Tuesday.
Kwon Seok-joon, a professor of chemical engineering at Sungkyunkwan University, said at the 6th Korea-U.S. Industrial Cooperation Conference co-hosted by the Korea Chamber of Commerce and Industry and the Korea-U.S. Association that "the global AI ecosystem is shifting from simple performance competition to competition centered on cost-to-performance and power-to-performance ratios." He added that "Korea, the U.S. and Japan should establish a joint research center for semiconductor development, an Asian version of imec."
Imec is Europe's largest nonprofit comprehensive semiconductor research institute, founded in Belgium. It operates as an industry-academia-research consortium for joint technology development, with participation from semiconductor companies around the world.
Kwon identified the "memory bottleneck" as a key obstacle hindering the global spread of AI, noting that "it is difficult for Samsung Electronics (005930.KS) and SK hynix (000660.KS) to resolve this bottleneck on their own." He stressed that "beyond sharing memory supply roadmaps with U.S. hyperscalers, the two governments must coordinate policies to address technological complexities."
Kwon also said there is significant room for cooperation in AI data center (DC) capabilities, which are directly tied to AI competitiveness.
Another argument raised was that Korea must exercise "strategic autonomy" by competing and cooperating with neighboring countries simultaneously to survive the restructuring of global supply chains driven by U.S.-China competition. Sung Yun-mo, former Minister of Trade, Industry and Energy, proposed combining Korea's hardware capabilities and Japan's materials processing capabilities with the U.S.-led AI supply chain as part of this approach. He said, "Industrial cooperation among Korea, the U.S. and Japan can simultaneously pursue efficiency through economies of scale and scope, security coordination, and stability through mutual technological complementarity," citing AI, semiconductors and shipbuilding as meaningful fields.
Cooperation in the energy sector was also emphasized. Participants discussed ways for the three countries to coordinate on liquefied natural gas (LNG) and small modular reactors (SMRs) in relation to energy security amid the recent Middle East situation.
