Original title: Japan’s “bright sword”, South Korea’s “hibernation”?
South Korea’s “Central Ilbo” published an editorial titled “The Japanese chip “dream team” has launched the sword and the South Korean chip bill has fallen into hibernation” on November 14. The full text is excerpted as follows:
Japan has shown its sword and is determined to restore its dominant position in the semiconductor industry. The Japanese companies participating in this struggle are very impressive in all aspects. The Japanese chip “dream team” consists of eight companies including Toyota, Sony, NTT, Softbank, and NEC. These companies all have or once had world-leading capabilities in their respective fields.
The Japanese chip dream team “Rapidus” means “fast” in Latin, which indicates that Japan will set off a speed war, and its goal is to achieve mass production of cutting-edge chips from 2027. Japan once dominated the global storage semiconductor market in the 1980s and has the production technology in this field. The key lies in cutting-edge talents. Rapidus decided to recruit Japanese engineers from Taiwan, the United States and other places to focus on cutting-edge semiconductor production lines with 2nm (1nm is equal to one billionth of a meter) process technology. The world‘s top companies such as Samsung Electronics, TSMC, and Intel are not expected to start using 2nm process technology until 2025 at the earliest.
In short, this is Japan’s ambitious plan to regain its semiconductor empire status from South Korea. This is not the first time Japan has made such an attempt. In 1992, Japan occupied 6 of the world‘s top 10 semiconductor companies, but these companies fell one after another in the game with Samsung Electronics. Afterwards, Japanese companies also tried to challenge Samsung Electronics by integrating the forces of the remnants of the defeated army. As a result, they were swallowed up by Samsung Electronics’ decisive and one-step investment offensive again, and finally fell like autumn leaves, until today they have completely lost their sense of existence.
However, changes in the semiconductor market structure have brought opportunities to Japanese companies again. The semiconductor market, which has been dominated by memory chips for many years, is now ushering in a new technological environment. With the progress of the fourth industrial revolution, the foundry of contract manufacturing, which can flexibly produce system semiconductors for various purposes, is gradually becoming the protagonist of the semiconductor market. The market is increasingly demanding system semiconductors for various applications such as self-driving cars, smartphone image sensors, artificial intelligence, and supercomputers.
While Samsung Electronics focused on developing memory chips such as DRAM and NAND flash memory, TSMC has grown rapidly in the field of system semiconductors. In recent years, Taiwan has been plagued by water shortages due to the characteristics of the island’s terrain, but it would rather stop the water supply to the rice fields and ensure the water supply to the semiconductor factories, fully supporting the rise of the semiconductor industry. The United States is accelerating the pace of semiconductor production, and now Japan is also rolling up its sleeves and preparing to restore its competitiveness in the semiconductor field.
And what is the situation in South Korea now? South Korea’s “Korea Chip Act”, which includes simplification of semiconductor cluster licensing procedures, has already been filed, but it has fallen into a deep hibernation state because the Democratic Party of Korea opposes “preferential benefits to large companies”. The semiconductor industry has become South Korea’s only economic pillar and security weapon, but now it is involved in political struggles and is on the verge of collapse. The Yoon Seok-yue government must persuade the opposition parties to pass the “Korea Chip Act” through non-partisan cooperation. If Japan succeeds in building a semiconductor empire again, South Korea will no longer have a future.