When Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang visited SK hynix's booth at Taiwan's Computex on the 2nd of this month, he signed a seventh-generation high-bandwidth memory (HBM4E) wafer and left behind a single sentence: "Please Make More." The words conveyed to a Korean company by the head of a firm that effectively holds the standard for the world's AI accelerator and software ecosystem were less an order than a plea.
Three days later, Huang came to Seoul. He stayed for four nights and five days. Throughout his schedule, he met one after another with chairmen and executives of major conglomerates including SK, Samsung Electronics, Hyundai Motor, LG, Naver, and Doosan, as well as heads of game companies and startups. The reason is that nearly all the ingredients for the "physical AI" he envisions — not only the high-bandwidth memory (HBM) that Nvidia desperately needs, but also cloud, data centers, automobiles, robots, games, and platforms — are gathered within a single country.
Nvidia's presence grew larger throughout the visit, intertwined with Huang's personal newsworthiness. A PC café prize event, a variety show appearance, a baseball ceremonial first pitch, samgyeopsal, and soju-beer cocktails sometimes drew more attention than the corporate cooperation agenda. Given that Nvidia grew within the gaming ecosystem and that Korea is a country with both semiconductors and gaming culture, it is not an unfamiliar combination. Still, a question remains. Was it truly desirable for us that the human Jensen Huang stood out more than the conditions he presented in his meetings with Korean companies? This is not Huang's fault. Embracing the market, partners, developers, and consumers all at once is a strategy that a corporate head should rightly possess. The series of crowd-friendly events only demonstrate how meticulous Nvidia's strategy is.
It is Korean companies that should look back on their response strategy. Answering "we will make more" to "please make more" is correct and quick in the short term. However, just because such rational choices pile up individually company by company does not mean they immediately become a single industrial order. If companies stop at putting their names on Nvidia's list of partners, Korea's technology and data will scatter along Nvidia's platform. Having many strong companies and having a strong industry are different things.
Of course, Huang did not come empty-handed. He is pushing to establish a research and development (R&D) center in Seoul, and discussions over priority supply of next-generation accelerators are also under way. But ultimately, this is closer to bringing the Nvidia ecosystem more deeply into Korea.
At this point, the slogan "Irreplaceable Korea," which President Lee Jae-myung put forward at his news conference marking the first anniversary of his inauguration on the 8th, turns into a question for industry. An irreplaceable country is not one that possesses much good technology. It is a country that presents price, standards, and terms together with that technology. A necessary country becomes a target of cooperation, while an irreplaceable country presents the terms of cooperation first.
In that context, Huang's itinerary during his Korea visit confirmed that Korea is a "necessary country." At the same time, it revealed the reality that it is difficult to become an "irreplaceable country" that sets the terms for the AI industry as a whole on the strength of a supply advantage in cutting-edge HBM alone.
This is not to say we should let go of Nvidia's hand and build a closed K-ecosystem. Even while connecting with the outside, the fruits of technology, industrial data, talent, and operational experience must be accumulated domestically as much as possible. Instead of having each Korean company's capabilities — in memory, cloud, mobility, robots, and more — scatter across Nvidia's various lists of achievements, we must find a way to connect each other's strengths and stand as "one set."
The problem is not an absence of capability but an absence of connection. Korea has memory and foundry, cloud and telecommunications networks, automobiles and robots, power and manufacturing sites all in place, but the common design to bind these into a single AI infrastructure operating system is weak. This is the homework of Korean industry. The government, too, must provide support so that companies can become stronger by being together. Power and data center infrastructure, rules for using industrial data, defense against the outflow of core talent, and the establishment of an AI computing foundation that companies can use together — all of which are core to corporate growth in the AI era — are areas the government must design and reinforce.
Jensen Huang said, "Please make more." Korea, which holds a key axis of cutting-edge HBM supply, possesses one powerful weapon to negotiate the terms of cooperation against Nvidia's platform power. But as long as semiconductors and cloud, mobility and robots, data centers and power each operate separately, that weapon alone cannot transcend the limitation of being "the most diligent supplier." Only when Korea's scattered assets are woven into a single AI industrial order and present price, standards, and terms together will "Irreplaceable Korea" finally become not a slogan but the language of industry.
