[Editorial] Isn't politics to blame for Korea's semiconductor industry's shaky position amid fierce competition from the US and Japan?

With the US, China and Japan all focusing on aggressive investment, an overseas report has been published stating that South Korea's semiconductor position could be overtaken by the US in two years.
They are sounding the alarm that while Korean semiconductors are bogged down in the "preferential treatment for corporations" controversy, they may lose their leadership in the global "war for money" and fall into the role of a follower.
According to a report by the Mitsui Institute for Global Studies, a think tank in the United States, the global production share of advanced semiconductors will be Taiwan (68%), South Korea (12%), the United States (12%), and China (8%) as of 2023.
However, by 2027, the United States will account for 17%, far surpassing South Korea's 13%. The report cites the background to this as the introduction of the CHIPS Act (Semiconductor Support Act) in 2022.
He pointed out the effect of significantly strengthening the manufacturing ecosystem in the United States. Since the CHIPS Act, reshoring by cutting-edge semiconductor companies in the United States has become active, and the effects of this have become fully apparent from two years later.
For example, Micron, the world's third largest memory semiconductor company, announced plans to invest approximately 147 trillion won in Clay, upstate New York, in 2022 to build a total of four megafabs.
Once completed, these will account for approximately 25% of the US semiconductor production. This means that the volume of materials procured from factories in Japan, Taiwan, and Singapore will be transferred to domestic production, and the Korean
The impact on exports of memory semiconductors to the US will also be unavoidable. The report also pays particular attention to Japan's revival. Rapidus, a semiconductor company with participation from the Japanese government and major companies such as Toyota and Sony, has announced that it will invest a huge amount of
With financial support and deregulation as a tailwind, the company aims to become the "Japanese version of TSMC" and succeed in mass-producing 2-nanometer logic semiconductors by 2027.
The Korean semiconductor crisis must not be ignored. The decline in the position of semiconductors, which account for about 25% of total exports, is a major threat to the Korean economy, which is based on exports.
It is clear that this will not just be a spark but a major fire for the industry. Despite the clear signs of the crisis, the government has not passed a special law on semiconductors, nor has it approved exceptions to the 52-hour work week as a "preferential" measure.
Politics should discard the old way of thinking that only sees things from a single perspective. If government officials continue to be so narrow-minded as to dismiss requests for easing the separation of finance and industry to support cutting-edge industries as "a request from companies," the "war for money" will lead to a K-half
The future for conductors is bound to be bleak.