According to a report in the 'Korean National Daily' on the 21st, SK Hynix is progressing with a plan to invest billions of Korean won in building a memory semiconductor manufacturing plant (fab) in Miyagi Prefecture, northeastern Japan. This will be the first major investment by South Korean semiconductor companies to establish local production bases in Japan. However, as investments in Japan become clearer, pressure from the United States to increase investments in memory products in the U.S. may also increase. This will make it more complex for South Korean companies to decide where to invest their resources.
SK Haili Shi Korea-Liaoning Branch
According to a report in the Hankook Ilbo on the 20th, SK Hynix is progressing the construction of a memory semiconductor wafer factory in Miyagi Prefecture, in the northeastern part of Honshu Island, Japan. A person familiar with the financial industry said, "It is understood that SK Group Chairman Choi Tae-yon also visited the area recently." Miyagi Prefecture, along with Kyushu and Hokkaido, is one of the three major semiconductor industrial bases that the Japanese government is focusing on cultivating.
The article states that SK Hynix's investment scale for this time is reportedly as high as hundreds of billions of Won. Compared to the hundreds of billions of Won investment by the domestic cluster in the Gyeonggi-do region, the scale of the plant establishment in Japan is relatively small. The Kyushu plant is a production base that SK Hynix established overseas at the same time as they are pushing ahead with domestic Dragon-Ri and Hunan semiconductor cluster construction according to their original plan. This move has been interpreted as, in the face of global memory supply-demand tension continuing to be tight, by making an early investment to expand capacity.
Japan's Miyagi Prefecture geographical location. Source: nippon
The article also states that if this plan becomes a reality, SK Hynix will become the third foreign company to have a semiconductor manufacturing plant in Japan, following American company Micron and Taiwanese company TSMC. Samsung Electronics currently only has a next-generation semiconductor packaging research institute in Yokohama.
However, according to an analysis by the Hankook Ilbo, this plan is not without risks.
Currently, while the United States is pressuring the South Korean government and companies to increase investment in wafer factories on its territory, if Japan's investment plans come true, the US demand for South Korea to expand local production could also increase further. This is one of the reasons.
Secondly, regarding investments by South Korea in its strategic industries—particularly the semiconductor sector—the alert sentiment and political uncertainty within South Korean public opinion also constitute factors of instability and obstacles.
