[Edaily Reporter Gong Ji-yu] "While South Korea’s semiconductor industry has been led by one or two giant companies such as Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix, Taiwan has nurtured its ecosystem through countless mid-sized and small businesses, each playing its own role."

Taiwanese semiconductor experts interviewed at "Computex 2026," Asia’s largest information technology (IT) exhibition held in Taipei, Taiwan, over four days starting on the 2nd (local time), described the biggest difference between Taiwan’s and South Korea’s semiconductor industries in these terms.

While the strength of Taiwan’s semiconductor industry may appear to stem solely from the achievements of TSMC, the world’s leading semiconductor foundry, a closer look reveals a very different reality. A structure has taken root in which design (fabless), foundry, back-end, and equipment companies compete and collaborate from their respective positions. A visit to the Hsinchu Science Park, an industrial cluster in Hsinchu City, Taiwan, revealed a closely connected ecosystem where mid-sized companies, universities, and research institutions are concentrated within a 10-minute walk of each other.

For a long time, South Korea has been accustomed to a growth model centered on large conglomerates. Suppliers followed the investments of Samsung and SK, and the strategies of these companies effectively dictated the direction of the industry. It was thanks to this focus that South Korea rose to the top globally in next-generation memory semiconductors, such as High-Bandwidth Memory (HBM). The problem is that this approach also has the limitation of creating a significant concentration in the memory sector, which is the core focus of these companies.

In contrast, Taiwan has established strong market dominance across the entire semiconductor value chain, ranking second globally in design and first in both manufacturing and back-end processes. This is the result of building a comprehensive ecosystem across all sectors. It is now serving as a powerful competitive advantage in the age of artificial intelligence (AI). Semiconductor design, manufacturing, advanced packaging, server assembly, cooling, and power infrastructure are all interconnected as a single flow. This is why global Big Tech companies are flocking to Taiwan.

South Korea also needs to restructure its industrial strategy to encompass system semiconductors, foundries, back-end processes, equipment and materials, and server, power, and cooling infrastructure. To leap beyond being a memory powerhouse and become a core pillar of the AI supply chain, we must actively seek lessons from Taiwan’s industrial ecosystem.