Na Kyung-won calls reported 400 trillion won Honam semiconductor investment 'abuse of power'

People Power Party lawmaker Na Kyung-won said Friday that the expected announcement of a semiconductor cluster investment by Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix in the Honam region amounts to "clear abuse of authority — taking the national economy hostage" by the Lee Jae-myung administration.

In a Facebook post Friday, Na said, "When power twists a company's arm, what ultimately breaks is the national economy," adding that corporate boards that yield to undue outside pressure "cannot escape liability for breach of fiduciary duty."

"A 400 trillion won semiconductor investment in Honam? The location of an industrial site — a decision that should be made rigorously by a company's board — was declared by the presidential policy chief and ordered by the president," Na said. "This is clear abuse of authority, taking the national economy hostage, and an extra-legal overreach of power."

Na added that the move is "nothing other than a treasonous act of causing losses to the state that would gut the global competitiveness of Korea's semiconductor industry," and that "the Lee Jae-myung administration's coerced extraction is a choice that helps neither the companies nor the Honam region."

"The very people who once drove corporate chiefs to ruin by invoking third-party bribery and collusion between business and politics are now sitting in Cheong Wa Dae, openly playing the role of company boss and trying to use corporate money as fuel for election campaigns," Na said. She warned that companies that cave to political pressure "may one day face far greater consequences before their shareholders and the public, and bitterly regret it."

Na said true development for the Honam region "is not this kind of semiconductor conscription," calling for "a more suitable industrial jobs strategy that allows both companies and Honam to win." She urged President Lee to "immediately stop the barbaric state-directed coercion that reduces core national strategic assets to political spoils," and called on companies not to "commit the error of breach of fiduciary duty by yielding to unjust political pressure and damaging the national economy and shareholders' interests."

"Let companies stand firm with autonomous, rational management decisions aimed solely at surviving with a global edge," Na said. "When power twists a company's arm, what ultimately breaks is the national economy. The abuse of power that holds the nation's future hostage will not be long in returning as a heavy legal boomerang."