Korean Media: China's Semiconductor Rise Threatens South Korea's Dominance!

On June 15, the Korean media outlet Kyunghyang News published an article stating that China's burgeoning semiconductor industry is increasingly posing a threat to South Korea's long-standing leadership in memory semiconductor markets. Particularly in specific areas such as wafer fabrication and NAND flash memory, the technological and market share gap between the two nations is gradually narrowing. Experts emphasize that South Korea must expand its talent pool to compete with China’s advanced talent reservoir and develop a concrete blueprint for building a comprehensive semiconductor ecosystem.

According to industry insiders, there remains a technological gap of about 2 to 3 years between South Korea and China in general-purpose DRAM and NAND semiconductor technologies, while the gap in high-bandwidth memory (HBM) stands at five years or more—though this disparity is shrinking rapidly.

For NAND flash memory, the number of stacked layers determines performance. Currently, SK Hynix leads with 321-layer stacking technology, but China’s leading NAND manufacturer, Yangtze Memory Technologies (YMTC), is closely following, having already begun mass production of 270-layer stacked NAND flash memory.

Professor Lee Jong-hwan from the Department of System Semiconductor Engineering at Sangmyung University said: “I believe there is still about a two-year gap in NAND flash memory, and roughly a three-year gap in general-purpose DRAM. However, given China’s extremely rapid pace of technological advancement, the landscape in certain fields could reverse within 5 to 10 years.”

Chinese companies are also steadily increasing their market share. As of last year, YMTC’s global market share in NAND flash memory reached 11.8%, and it is expected to exceed 14% next year. Meanwhile, ChangXin Memory Technologies’ share in the global DRAM market grew from 5% last year to around 8% this year, with projections suggesting it could achieve double-digit market share next year.

The rapid development of China’s semiconductor foundry sector is also remarkable. According to data from market research firm TrendForce, by the end of last quarter, the gap in market share between Samsung Electronics (7.1%) and China’s largest semiconductor foundry, SMIC (5.2%), had narrowed by 0.7 percentage points compared to the same period last year.

Professor Park Young-jun, emeritus professor at the School of Electrical and Information Engineering, Seoul National University, pointed out: “Currently, China’s technology itself does not pose a major threat. What truly concerns us is not technology, but talent. In terms of human resource supply, South Korea is at a decisive disadvantage—only about one-tenth of China’s. Talent cultivation is therefore a critical area requiring urgent attention in South Korea.”

Original source: toutiao.com/article/1868054663142412/

Disclaimer: The views expressed in this article are those of the author(s) alone.