South Korea’s President Lee Jae Myung on June 29, 2026 unveiled the country’s most ambitious technology initiative to date, with government ministers announcing corporate pledges totaling at least 1,350 trillion won — roughly $880 billion — directed at semiconductors, artificial intelligence, and data-center infrastructure over the coming decade.
Lee framed the program around what he called a “triple axis”: advanced chip fabrication, physical AI systems, and data centers. “We must secure the core elements of AI faster than any other country,” he said at the ceremony, flanked by the chief executives of Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix.
What the plan includes
The largest single block — 800 trillion won ($518 billion) — comes from Samsung, SK Hynix, and their domestic supply-chain partners, who committed to building two new semiconductor fabrication sites each. Investment is concentrated in the southwestern Gwangju and South Jeolla provinces.
A chip-packaging cluster near Seoul in the Chungcheong region will receive an additional 81 trillion won ($52.5 billion). Three major Korean conglomerates — SK Group, GS Group, and Naver — pledged a combined $356 billion toward AI data-center construction. By 2035, South Korea is targeting 18.4 gigawatts of installed AI data-center capacity nationwide.
Why it matters
The announcement arrives as governments worldwide race to anchor domestic chip production and AI infrastructure. South Korea is already home to two of the world’s most critical chip suppliers: Samsung is the planet’s largest memory-chip manufacturer, and SK Hynix produces the high-bandwidth memory chips that power most of today’s leading AI accelerators.
At its declared scale, Monday’s package would rank among the largest coordinated national technology investments on record. Lee cast the initiative as existential: moving too slowly, he implied, risks ceding AI leadership to rivals in the United States, China, and Taiwan.
Not all observers are convinced by the details. Opposition lawmakers argued that routing a second semiconductor cluster through the Honam region reflects electoral politics more than industrial strategy. The government has not publicly responded to those criticisms.