Samsung and SK Plan $1.3 Trillion Joint Investment Over 10 Years, Focusing on Semiconductor Fabs
Miles Bennett
Samsung and SK Group plan to invest up to ₩2,000 trillion (roughly $1.3 trillion) in chip manufacturing over the next decade — South Korea's largest-ever concentrated bet on semiconductors, with Gwangju set to become a new fab cluster.
How big is $1.3 trillion, really?
Samsung Group and SK Group plan a combined investment of up to ₩2,000 trillion (about $1.3 trillion) over ten years, forming the core of President Lee Jae-myung's flagship industrial strategy.
Earlier reports pegged Samsung alone at over ₩1,000 trillion. The new combined ceiling doubles that figure, far exceeding market expectations.
This means → South Korea is treating semiconductors as a national-scale wager — this is no longer a single-company capex cycle but a full-blown industrial mobilization.
Where are the new fabs going, and what will they make?
Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix each plan to build four to five wafer fabs in Gwangju, turning the city into Korea's newest chip-manufacturing hub.
Samsung will also build a chip-packaging plant in South Chungcheong province; SK Hynix will expand NAND flash (storage chips that retain data when powered off) capacity in North Chungcheong province.
In plain terms = front-end manufacturing concentrates in Gwangju, while back-end packaging and memory fan out across the Chungcheong provinces — Korea is building out both ends of the chip supply chain simultaneously.
Why is the presidential office hosting the announcement?
President Lee will chair a "Great Leap Three Super-Projects" launch event Monday afternoon. Officials from industry, science, climate, and land-use agencies will outline policy first; Samsung and SK will then present their individual plans.
Senior presidential policy adviser Kim Yong-beom called the numbers to be revealed on June 29 "very unusual," with focus areas spanning semiconductors, AI data centers, and physical AI.
This reflects a government that is not merely "supporting" corporate investment but elevating chip expansion into a presidential-level political project — corporate capex and national strategy are now tightly linked.
Can this money actually be spent?
If fully executed, this would be the largest concentrated fab-expansion commitment in South Korean semiconductor history.
Gwangju alone would need to absorb eight to ten new fabs in a compressed timeframe — land, power supply, and talent pipelines must all keep pace for the strategy to deliver.
This means → the bigger the number, the higher the execution risk. The gap between a pledge and a running fab is what the market will actually be watching.
Content is for reference only, not financial advice.