The heavier burden of corporate taxes and cost per hire are weighing on South Korean chipmaking giants like Samsung Electronics, indicating the unfavorable conditions leave them behind competitors like Taiwan-based TSMC amid intensifying semiconductor competition worldwide, according to a local think tank Wednesday. Korea sets the maximum rate of the corporate tax at 25 percent -- imposed on taxable income of large business entities like Samsung -- as a result of a tax hike by 3 percentage poi

Technology Aug. 10, 2022

South Korea’s trade deficit with China is likely to persist for the time being, unless Korea strives to achieve supply chain independence from China, according to a report by lobby group Korea Chamber of Commerce and Industry on Tuesday. The growing reliance on China over key materials used for Korean semiconductor or battery manufacturing signals Seoul‘s need to upgrade its free trade agreement terms with China as cost attractiveness of Chinese goods will continue to deteriorate Ko

Industry Aug. 9, 2022

South Korean lithium-ion battery cell makers are expected to be beneficiaries once the Inflation Reduction Act comes into force in the United States, as the bill is likely to induce US electric vehicle makers to cut their reliance on Chinese battery components. But at the same time, Korean battery makers are now pressured to preemptively diversify their import sources of key materials out of China, as the new US bill is apparently aimed at countering China’s influence on the EV supply cha

Technology Aug. 9, 2022

Hanwha Group Chairman Kim Seung-youn’s wife, Suh Yung-min, died at 61 at a hospital in the United States on Sunday, as she was suffering from cancer, the group said Tuesday. Suh is survived by Kim, who leads South Korea‘s seventh-largest conglomerate dedicated to chemicals, renewable energy and finance, and their three sons, Dong-kwan, Dong-won and Dong-sun. Suh, who studied pharmaceuticals at Seoul National University, was the daughter of five-term lawmaker Suh Chung-hwa, who fo

Industry Aug. 9, 2022

South Korea is poised to join a working-level meeting of government officials involving major chipmaking nations along with the United States, Taiwan and Japan, amid mounting concerns over China’s retaliation. Seoul has had to tread carefully around Beijing, as memory chip giants such as Samsung Electronics and SK hynix fear that its chipmaking base in China might be affected by Seoul‘s decision to join the so-called “Chip 4” alliance. President Yook Suk-yeol told repo

Technology Aug. 8, 2022

SK hynix’s 121.7 trillion won ($93.8 billion) plan to set up a semiconductor manufacturing cluster is facing an unexpected hurdle as the South Korean chipmaking giant is being denied a request for water usage from a city adjacent to the cluster’s location in Greater Seoul. The city of Yeoju, Gyeonggi Province, is demanding greater compensation in exchange for letting SK hynix build underground pipes needed to transport massive amounts of water crucial for producing next-generation

Technology Aug. 7, 2022

South Korean telecommunications firm KT and its Turkish counterpart Turk Telekom have signed a strategic partnership to foster collaboration in the field of media content to private fifth-generation network setup and joint investment in startups, KT announced Sunday. This is a follow-up to the nonbinding memorandum of understanding for cooperation between the two companies at the Mobile World Congress in March. According to KT, the new deal will give users of Turk Telekom‘s internet pro

Technology Aug. 7, 2022

Memory chip giant Samsung Electronics said Wednesday it unveiled a set of next-generation memory and storage technologies to better address various client demands for handling big data. Choi Jin-hyeok, executive vice president of memory solution and product development at Samsung Electronics, told an audience at the Flash Memory Summit 2022 that the array of technologies, including “perabyte storage,” “memory-semantic solid state drive” and “telemetry” is cru

Technology Aug. 3, 2022

SK hynix said Tuesday that it had unveiled plans to mass-produce the industry‘s first 238-layer four-dimensional NAND flash memory in the first half of 2023. At the Flash Memory Summit of 2022 held in Santa Clara, California, Choi Jung-dal, head of NAND development at SK hynix, said the newest NAND flash, which boasts the highest layer count and highest triple-level cell density in the industry, has been sampled by clients after the development was complete in July. The technological br

Technology Aug. 3, 2022

South Korean lawmakers are poised to propose a new bill aimed at providing domestic chipmakers with more extensive tax benefits in return for facility investment, a step toward its own version of the US-passed CHIPS Act to be effective Thursday. The new bill, unveiled Tuesday by a group of lawmakers led by independent lawmaker Rep. Yang Hyang-ja, is designed to triple the tax incentives for chipmakers, an apparent move to encourage more investment from semiconductor players. At least 20 perce

Technology Aug. 2, 2022

South Korean chipmaker SK hynix said Tuesday it has completed the acquisition of domestic contract-based chip manufacturer Key Foundry The announcement came nine months after SK hynix signed a 575.8 billion won ($440.3 million) deal in October to acquire the entire stake of the 200-millimeter wafer foundry company based in Cheongju, North Chungcheong Province, from local private equity firms Alchemist Capital Partners and Gravity Private Equity. SK hynix added that it has won the antitru

Technology Aug. 2, 2022

South Korean memory chip maker SK hynix said Monday it has sampled the first memory product under the compute express link memory interface, a concept considered a game-changer in the electronics industry that is facing memory storage bottleneck. The announcement heralds SK hynix‘s long-awaited move to enter the market and roll out expandable CXL memory products for servers by 2023, according to the world’s second-largest DRAM chip maker. CXL is a newly-emerging semiconductor stand

Industry Aug. 1, 2022

South Korean petrochemical firm SK Geo Centric has started construction on a facility to produce semiconductor wafer surface washing material with Tokyo-based chemical firm Tokuyama in Ulsan, a city some 300 kilometers southeast of Seoul, the company announced Monday. SK Geo Centric aims to produce some 30,000 tons of semiconductor-grade high-purity isopropyl alcohol each year through a 50:50 joint venture with Tokuyama called Stac beginning in 2024. Isopropyl alcohol is the material used to c

Industry Aug. 1, 2022

South Korean lithium-ion battery cell maker SK On announced Thursday that it plans to attract a combined $2 billion loan to ramp up its push for a new battery plant in Europe. The green financing will come from seven commercial banks with three export credit agencies -- Korea Trade Insurance Corp., Export-Import Bank of Korea and Allianz Trade (formerly known as Euler Hermes) -- supporting loans, loan guarantees and insurance. The borrowing will go to SK On‘s third European battery plant

Industry July 28, 2022

Samsung Electronics logged an operating profit of 14.1 trillion won ($10.77 billion) during the second quarter, up 12.2 percent from the previous year despite rising material prices and recession fears that are weakening consumer demands, the company said Thursday. The South Korean tech giant’s quarterly revenue from April to June came to 77.2 trillion won, up 21.3 percent from a year prior, slightly beating the market consensus of 77 trillion won. The quarterly sales figure was the seco

Technology July 28, 2022