By Hyunjoo Jin, Joyce Lee and Heejin Kim <\/p>\n
SEOUL, June 26 (Reuters) – Samsung Group will unveil a sweeping decade-long investment plan on Monday, pledging 1,000 trillion won ($648 billion) to anchor South Korea’s next growth cycle, \u200cincluding a possible 300 trillion won push to build chip factories in the country’s southwest, a media report \u200csaid. <\/p>\n
The investment, which would include AI data centers, batteries and displays, will be announced at a meeting with President Lee Jae Myung at the presidential \u200boffice, the Maeil Business Newspaper said on Friday, without citing sources. <\/p>\n
Top executives from heavyweights including Samsung Electronics and its rival SK Hynix will attend the meeting and lay out investment plans targeting regions beyond Seoul and its surrounding hubs, the report said. <\/p>\n
The report did not say when the investment would be made. <\/p>\n
At its core, the initiative appears designed to decentralise South Korea’s AI boom \u200cinto a nationwide engine of growth, easing infrastructure \u2060bottlenecks while jumpstarting jobs, innovation hubs and next-generation manufacturing across underserved regions. <\/p>\n
The concentration of the chipmakers’ production facilities in areas around Seoul has long drawn political pressure, and has been amplified by \u2060Lee’s push for balanced regional development. <\/p>\n
Lee had separate meetings with the heads of Samsung and SK this week, media reports said. <\/p>\n
The presidential office said it will announce on Monday “three mega-projects” to drive a national leap forward, although it has not yet confirmed the content \u200bof \u200bthe projects. <\/p>\n
Samsung and SK Hynix declined to comment. <\/p>\n
Samsung Group is South \u200bKorea’s biggest conglomerate, with chip giant Samsung Electronics as \u200cits crown jewel, but also other affiliates such as battery maker Samsung SDI and IT services company Samsung SDS. <\/p>\n
A presidential adviser said this week that it is in talks with Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix on the next phase of large-scale investments in semiconductor production facilities to meet exponential growth in AI-driven demand for chips. <\/p>\n
Presidential policy adviser Kim Yong-beom said on Wednesday that SK Hynix and Samsung may need to accelerate projects originally slated for the 2040s into the mid-2030s because AI-driven \u200cmemory demand was growing faster than expected, leaving no room, power \u200bor water in the capital region for subsequent expansion. <\/p>\n
REGIONAL DEVELOPMENT <\/p>\n
The regional politics \u200bsurrounding semiconductor investment became a flashpoint ahead of South \u200bKorea’s June 3 local elections, and debate over where the next wave of funding should go \u200chas intensified as Lee’s government has made AI a \u200bcore economic policy priority. <\/p>\n
Lee’s approval \u200brating has fallen to 51%, the lowest since his inauguration in June last year, Gallup Korea said on Friday. <\/p>\n
Candidates across multiple regions aggressively pitched their areas as the next semiconductor hub, promising to lure giants such as \u200bSamsung and SK Hynix. Proposals ranged from \u200ca 500 trillion won chip complex in the southwest to expanded clusters in Gyeonggi, Chungcheong and Gangwon, according \u200bto local media, underscoring a nationwide contest for strategic tech investment. <\/p>\n
($1 = 1,544.3200 won) <\/p>\n
(Reporting by Heejin Kim, Hyunjoo \u200bJin and Joyce LeeEditing by Ed Davies and Shri Navaratnam) <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Hyunjoo Jin, Joyce Lee and Heejin Kim SEOUL, June 26 (Reuters) – Samsung Group will unveil a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":729159,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[45],"tags":[182,181,507,10262,313452,49643,313451,313454,313453,10260,1866,74],"class_list":["post-729158","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-artificial-intelligence","tag-ai","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-artificialintelligence","tag-lee-jae-myung","tag-maeil-business-newspaper","tag-samsung-electronics","tag-samsung-group","tag-samsung-sdi","tag-samsung-sds","tag-sk-hynix","tag-south-korea","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/729158","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=729158"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/729158\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/729159"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=729158"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=729158"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=729158"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}