Chey Tae-won urges Korea to export 'intelligence,' not just memory chips, amid US-China rivalry

Chey Tae-won, chairman of SK Group and the Korea Chamber of Commerce and Industry, said SK Hynix shares are worth holding for the long term. "Memory semiconductors will always be needed, so the price trends upward over time," he said. "Rather than buying and selling, just sit on them — that's the best way to preserve your wealth."

Chey made the remarks Friday at an AI-focused discussion held during the KCCI Summer Forum in Jeju, expressing confidence in SK Hynix's share price outlook. "AI is still like a 4-year-old child, but memory chips will be indispensable as it grows up," he said. "That demand will grow exponentially."

On Korea's AI industry strategy, Chey proposed targeting niche markets that sidestep the US-China technology rivalry. "The US is taking a quality-focused approach, while China is going for price dominance," he said, adding that Korea faces a difficult position on both fronts. "It's hard for Korea to lower token costs, and it's also hard to beat the US on quality," he said.

"We need to build the infrastructure, develop the applications we need on top of it, and carve out niche markets," Chey said. "Countries caught between the US and China are finding it hard to choose sides — Korea needs to create a situation where it can export and sell, whether that's large language models or applications." He also said Korea should move beyond simply selling memory chips. "We shouldn't just keep selling memory — we need to build computing capacity and sell that," he said.

Chey outlined four capabilities he sees as essential for the AI era, describing them as four types of "muscle": thinking muscle, adaptability muscle, empathy muscle and body skills.

"Future education should move away from rote learning and toward finding what is genuinely useful in people's lives," he said. "Just as SK Hynix recently announced it no longer requires a university degree for new hires, the era when a college diploma defined talent is over."

He added that while AI can simulate understanding, true empathy remains beyond its reach. "Ultimately, the capacity for empathy — in both feeling and action — will be the core competency of the future," he said. "Startups and failures will become more frequent, and what we'll need are people with the resilience to learn from failure and get back up."

Chey also made clear that cost reduction should not be the ultimate goal of AI development.

"Training AI agents to boost productivity does not mean employees will lose their jobs," he said. "Instead of thinking first about cutting costs, we need to find new roles for the people who are freed up."

He went on to say that companies grow by continuously uncovering tasks that were never done before or never even imagined, and redeploying people to fill them. "Employees, too, will need to reinvent themselves — either as all-round players not confined to a single role, or as freelancers juggling multiple jobs at once, not tied to any one company," he said.

Meanwhile, Chey has served as KCCI chairman since 2021, when he was elected to his first term as the 24th chairman. He was subsequently reelected for a second term as the 25th chairman, a tenure that runs through March next year.