Kim Yong-beom: Semiconductor fab cluster outside Greater Seoul 'a powerful national strategy'

By Yang Geun-hyuk, The Herald Business

Kim Yong-beom, chief of the Cheong Wa Dae Policy Office, said Saturday that "a large-scale semiconductor fab cluster outside the Greater Seoul area is a very powerful national strategy," posting the remarks on Facebook amid an ongoing political debate over expected announcements by Samsung Electronics and SK hynix of major semiconductor facility investments in the Honam region.

In the post, Kim said semiconductors "are no longer a matter for a specific industry" but "a core variable of the era that connects the economy and national security, education and youth, the metropolitan area and the regions, and finance and real estate." He added that "borrowing the language of 1980s social science, AI and semiconductors are today's base structure."

He then said the country must "expand production while channeling excess liquidity into productive areas and creating new opportunities for young people."

Kim said conventional approaches would not be sufficient and that "a special national-level strategy" was needed — one that builds fabs more boldly, directs excess liquidity away from Greater Seoul apartments, and provides youth with programs on the scale of a New Deal. He said a fab cluster outside the Greater Seoul area "is not a regional balanced-development policy" but "a national strategy that simultaneously addresses three challenges: industrial policy, macroeconomic policy and social policy."

Kim said "the ideological and political frames of the past cannot explain what is unfolding before us," adding that "our public discourse is still clinging to the past — ideological disputes, value debates, endless political squabbling."

He also wrote that "if we are held back by wasteful debate and endless procedures, we may miss a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity," and that "value debates do not enrich people's lives — solving the bread-and-butter problems of the public is the reason politics and policy exist."

Kim had also posted twice on Facebook the previous day, saying "the production capacity the AI era demands is difficult for a single cluster to handle, and new production bases must be prepared in advance," and that "fab production capacity is king." President Lee Jae Myung posted related messages on X, formerly Twitter, six times that same day.