Choo Mi-ae, the Democratic Party’s candidate for governor of Gyeonggi Province, said on April 24 she would work as “one team” with the government and the ruling party to strengthen the global competitiveness of the region’s semiconductor cluster.
Choo visited Samsung Electronics’ Pyeongtaek campus, a Korea Land & Housing Corp. (LH) site for a national industrial complex in Yongin, and SK hynix’s Yongin industrial complex. Calling the Gyeonggi semiconductor cluster “a core task that will determine the future of South Korea’s economy,” she said, “With speed and drive, I will complete the world’s best semiconductor cluster.”
She added that if her party wins the June local elections, “the president, governor, mayors and lawmakers will clearly become one team,” and pledged to “take responsibility to the end and prove it with results.”
Accompanying her were Democratic Party lawmakers Hong Ki-won and Kim Hyun-jung from Pyeongtaek, and Lee Sang-sik, Son Myung-soo, Boo Seung-chan and Lee Eon-ju from Yongin, along with Choi Won-yong, the party’s candidate for Pyeongtaek mayor, and Hyun Geun-taek, its candidate for Yongin mayor.
At Samsung’s Pyeongtaek campus, Choo described the so-called “Suwon-Yongin-Seongnam-Pyeongtaek-Osan-Icheon semiconductor belt” — spanning Suwon, Yongin, Hwaseong, Seongnam, Anseong, Pyeongtaek, Osan and Icheon — as a key axis of the country’s industry, and said she would further strengthen it into a world-class semiconductor cluster.
She cited the Netherlands’ ASML, a global semiconductor equipment maker with manufacturing facilities in Dongtan, Hwaseong, and U.S.-based Applied Materials, which plans to build a research and development center in Osan, underscoring her push to advance semiconductor technology centered on Pyeongtaek.
At the SK hynix site in Yongin, Choo said a “mega-scale semiconductor ecosystem” is needed by combining private investment with public infrastructure, and called for completing the Gyeonggi semiconductor cluster as a single, ultra-wide industrial belt.
* This article has been translated by AI.
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