BOTTOM LINE: South Korea is moving aggressively to build the infrastructure behind artificial intelligence, committing vast sums to chips and data centers as it tries to maintain its position in a rapidly evolving tech economy. The government is coordinating roughly 1,350 trillion won (about $880 billion) in planned investments from major companies including Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix. The focus is not just on expanding capacity but on strengthening the broader AI ecosystem, from high-end memory chips to the data centers that power them.
A significant portion of that spending is earmarked for semiconductor manufacturing. Samsung Group and SK Group plan to build two new chip fabrication plants each in the country's southwest, with a combined value of about 800 trillion won. The goal is to rapidly expand capacity as demand accelerates for memory chips that power AI systems, particularly high-bandwidth memory used in intensive computing applications.
At the same time, South Korea is scaling up its data infrastructure. Companies, including Naver, are expected to invest about 550 trillion won to develop 8.4 gigawatts of AI data center capacity by 2029. That level of expansion would enable the country to handle large-scale AI workloads domestically rather than relying on overseas providers.
