South Korea announces more than $1 trillion AI, chip investment drive

South Korean president frames the push as a race against time to secure the country’s domination in AI boom.South Korea has laid out a sweeping industrial strategy focused on semiconductor chips and Artificial Intelligence projects as President Lee Jae Myung pledges to cement overwhelming industry leadership with investments of hundreds of billions of dollars over several years.Flanked by the heads of the world’s two biggest memory chipmakers, Lee cast the initiative on Monday as a “great leap forward” centred on the “triple axis” of semiconductors, physical AI and data centres.Recommended Stories list of 4 itemslist 1 of 4Apple, Microsoft hike prices over surging chip costslist 2 of 4North Korea conducts major weapons tests; South training ‘drone warriors’list 3 of 4South Korean court jails former first lady for seven years in bribery caselist 4 of 4‘Incompetent people’: South Korea’s World Cup 2026 exit prompts fury at homeend of list“We must secure the core elements of AI faster than any other country,” the president said in a televised address.The world’s two largest memory chipmakers, Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix, will invest 800 trillion won ($518bn) with suppliers to build two new chip fabrication sites each in South Korea’s southwest, Industry Minister Kim Jung-kwan said.Lee said the country’s southwestern city of Gwangju and South Jeolla province will also invest 5 trillion to 20 trillion won ($3.2bn to $13bn) in the projects. Kim said a further 81 trillion won ($52.5bn) is expected to be invested for a chip-packaging cluster in the Chungcheong area near Seoul.The government also unveiled plans to build AI data centres in the region, backed by 550 trillion won ($356bn) in investments from the SK Group, GS Group and Naver.“By 2035, an additional 10-gigawatt AI data centre will be built with a total investment exceeding 18.4 gigawatts and 1,000 trillion won,” or $648bn, Science Minister Bae Kyung-hoon announced.The announcement marks the government’s boldest push yet to align South Korea’s AI and chip ambitions with Lee’s pledge to narrow regional disparities and revive economies beyond the Seoul metropolitan area.The opposition has criticised the plan, arguing that his government’s decision to locate a second semiconductor cluster in Honam, the traditional electoral stronghold of his liberal Democratic Party, is driven more by regional politics than by industrial logic.