South Korea to build ‘world’s largest’ chip center with $230 billion investment from Samsung

South Korea says it will build an enormous facility to make computer chips in greater Seoul, with about $230 billion in investment from memory chip giant Samsung Electronics. The plans were announced by President Yoon Suk Yeol on Wednesday and confirmed by the electronics giant.

“We will build the world’s largest new ‘high-tech system semiconductor cluster’ in the Seoul Metropolitan area based on large-scale private investment of almost 300 trillion Korean won,” he said. “In addition, we will grow the ‘semiconductor mega cluster’ to the world’s largest in connection with the existing memory semiconductor manufacturing complexes.”

A government statement sent to CNN said the chip cluster would be located in Gyeonggi province, which is part of the Seoul Metropolitan area, and the total investment would be completed in about 20 years. In order to protect intellectual property, the country will revise its Industrial Technology Protection Act, according to the statement, which did not offer additional details.

Read more