"Having any industry too concentrated in one place is itself a risk factor. Building a semiconductor fab in a regional area is by no means impossible."
Moon Sung-wook, an advisor at law firm Yulchon who served as the last Minister of Trade, Industry and Energy (now the Ministry of Trade and Industry) under the Moon Jae-in administration, made these remarks to Seoul Economic Daily on Saturday regarding plans for a semiconductor fab investment in Gwangju. "Unless it is an industry like oil extraction that requires an oil field from the start, attracting regional fabs is ultimately a matter of will on the part of the government and companies," he said.
Moon assessed that the issues of securing water, power, and talent—cited as the three major obstacles to building a semiconductor fab in Gwangju—are sufficiently solvable. "In the past, enormous amounts of water were needed to produce ultrapure water, but now wastewater reprocessing technology has advanced, making it possible to operate a plant with only half the level required in the past," he explained, noting that the water burden has decreased.
Regarding concerns over instability in power supply, he predicted, "We can prioritize the use of renewable energy infrastructure, but in the long term, we can sufficiently meet power needs by building small modular reactors (SMRs) and the like nearby."
In particular, on the greatest challenge—the "phenomenon of top talent avoiding regional areas"—Moon pointed to a paradigm shift in corporate compensation systems as the solution. "We are now in an era of '600 million won bonuses,' and the scale of compensation has changed," he stressed. "If top-tier companies like Samsung Electronics (005930.KS) or SK hynix (000660.KS) promise secure jobs and bold economic compensation, there will inevitably be people willing to move down even to the Honam region."
He emphasized that distributing fabs to regional areas goes beyond simple balanced development and is a matter of "risk hedging" for survival. "The excessive concentration of a particular industry and power in one region is itself a national risk," Moon said. "Even Japan alone has scattered fabs across the country, from Hokkaido to Kumamoto in the south, to prepare for natural disasters such as earthquakes and shutdown situations."
