The clash between President Lee Jae-myung and the opposition over the "Honam semiconductor cluster" is intensifying. When the opposition criticized the selection of the Honam region as "Honam no matter what," arguing there was no fair public bidding process or objective site evaluation, President Lee fired back by highlighting the location's competitiveness in water, power, and renewable energy, saying "South Jeolla and Gwangju are places that already received the highest scores in the semiconductor specialized complex evaluation."
Over two days on Friday and Saturday, President Lee posted a total of seven messages on X (formerly Twitter), directly responding to the opposition's criticism of semiconductor investment in Honam.
The most contentious issue was the claim that the government's inducement of corporate investment in Honam constituted an "abuse of authority." Earlier, People Power Party leader Jang Dong-hyeok criticized, "President Lee personally summons the chairmen of 'Samjeonnix' (Samsung Electronics and SK hynix) and pressures them to build a semiconductor cluster in Honam," adding that "he wields the semiconductor industry recklessly anywhere, like using Jo Ja-ryong's old sword." People Power Party lawmaker Ahn Cheol-soo pointed out that "for the presidential office to lead and demand that private companies invest in a specific region is an abuse of authority."
President Lee rebutted these claims on two occasions. He stated, "Through the creation of a business environment and the persuasion and requests of public officials, CEOs made the decision judging that it would benefit their companies." He then retorted, "This is not called abuse of authority or coercive instruction, but administrative guidance or facilitating administration." He went further, saying it was "the result of public officials fulfilling their rightful responsibility to achieve the administrative goal of balanced national development, which has become the Republic of Korea's survival strategy."
The intensity of his remarks gradually escalated. When independent lawmaker Han Dong-hoon asked, "Is this any different from the Park Geun-hye government's Mir and K-Sports Foundation case, where companies were said to have donated 'voluntarily'?" President Lee replied, "Buddha sees Buddha in others, and a pig sees pigs."
The two sides also clashed over whether the Honam location chosen for the semiconductor investment was appropriate. The opposition argued that the optimal site should be selected by considering everything from water — essential for semiconductor production — to power, manpower, and land, but that the review was insufficient. Former People Power Party lawmaker Yoo Seong-min pointed out, "There was no fair public bidding process or attraction competition whatsoever," noting there had been no process of objectively evaluating site conditions across non-capital regions. The People Power Party also criticized President Lee's claim that "100 tons of industrial water per day can be supplied in Honam," saying it lacked objective grounds and a concrete supply plan.
President Lee countered that if water resources in the Honam region are properly allocated, water supply would not only be sufficient, but added that "the southwestern coast is a place rich in renewable energy resources." He also shared a report that South Jeolla and Gwangju received the "highest scores" in the 2023 semiconductor specialized complex bid, emphasizing that "this was already officially confirmed by the National Assembly and the government during former President Yoon Suk-yeol's tenure." In that bid, South Jeolla and Gwangju obtained the highest scores in industry-academia-research cooperation, technology preemption effects, and infrastructure securing.
The background to President Lee personally addressing the various suspicions and criticisms raised by the opposition is interpreted as reflecting a recognition that this Honam semiconductor investment goes beyond a simple regional investment project, representing a symbolic project that concentrates the Lee Jae-myung administration's core policy tasks — including balanced national development, the realignment of advanced industries, responding to regional extinction, and securing industrial competitiveness in the artificial intelligence (AI) era. President Lee stressed, "Building a semiconductor industry ecosystem in Honam is not a privilege for a specific region," adding, "It is putting into practice the national cause of achieving balanced territorial development and easing deep-rooted regional discrimination and the Yeongnam-Honam conflict."
The government also responded actively for these reasons, fully rebutting the opposition's offensive. Minister of Trade, Industry and Energy Kim Jung-kwan wrote on Facebook, "Companies have long judged that the Yongin cluster alone would be insufficient to respond to future global demand and competition, and have been reviewing new candidate sites." Presidential Policy Office Chief Kim Yong-beom also emphasized, "In the AI era, the country that builds (fabs) wins," while highlighting the inevitability of regional investment by saying, "A large-scale semiconductor fab cluster outside the capital region is a very powerful national strategy."
However, despite the government's active explanations, controversy over the process by which Honam was selected as the final investment candidate site appears likely to continue for some time. Former lawmaker Yoo said pointedly, "Since it's Honam no matter what, from Samjeonnix's standpoint there is only the choice of whether to accept this or reject it, and because the power's 'administrative guidance' in the early days of the administration is frightening, they made the 'decision.'"
