The Role of Government in the Korean Semiconductor Industry

Overall, the Korean government has supported the development of the semiconductor industry. And yet it has played a somewhat limited role even though it seems to have had intention to play a proactive role. The case of the semiconductor industry is interesting in that private firms seem to have led the industry development and the government has followed their lead. Unlike other industry development such as steel and mobile phone in which the Korean government took the initiative, the semiconductor industry was initiated by private firms in the early stage of entry into the semiconductor business requiring lumpy capital investment and high technology.

During the mid 1960s and mid 1970s...

With the launch of the 4th 5 year plan (1977-1981) in the late 1970s the government began to seriously pay attention to the semiconductor industry and continuously did so throughout the 1980s in an effort to diversify its industry portfolio, previously focused on the HCI...

In the early 1980s, the government policy shifted its policy direction from...

From the mid-1980 through the mid-1990...

In the wake of the Asian financial crisis in 1997, the Korean government pursued the so-called “Big-Deal” policy...

...Although the government has made some effort to amend the situation, its piecemeal approach and inconsistent policy measures have not spur the advanced development of much-needed technology...

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