SEOUL, July 02 (AJP) -Chip giants Samsung Group and SK hynix on Thursday unveiled a combined 240 trillion won ($173 billion) investment plan for South Korea's Chungcheong region to position the location just south of the capital area as the epicenter for the supply chain underpinning the country's industrial shift toward artificial intelligence.
The announcements were made during the government's "Chungcheong Advanced Industry Development Vision" event at Samsung Display's Asan campus, where Lee said the region's concentration of semiconductors, displays, batteries and biotechnology gives it unique advantages to become a global innovation center in the AI era.
Lee also praised Samsung Executive Chairman Jay Y. Lee's latest investment decision, comparing it with founder Lee Byung-chull's landmark decision to enter the semiconductor business in 1983.
"Just as that visionary decision made Korea a semiconductor powerhouse, I am confident Chairman Jay Y. Lee's decision will lead a new leap forward for the country's advanced industries," the president said.
Samsung said it plans to invest about 140 trillion won across Chungcheong to expand next-generation display, high-bandwidth memory (HBM), battery and advanced packaging capabilities, aiming to establish the region as a global materials and components manufacturing base while creating about 250,000 jobs.
A centerpiece of the plan is Samsung Electronics' investment in new HBM fabrication facilities at its Onyang campus, where the company plans to build five HBM production lines, while expanding and modernizing HBM-related manufacturing equipment in Cheonan to support next-generation AI memory production.
Samsung Display will expand OLED production lines in Asan for smartphones, information technology devices, extended reality, automotive applications, humanoid robots and wearable devices as it seeks to complete a next-generation display cluster.
Samsung SDI will establish a new battery mother line in Cheonan to validate next-generation battery technologies before transferring them to global production bases, while Samsung Electro-Mechanics will expand AI server package substrate production in Sejong alongside additional research and development investment.
Separately, SK hynix announced plans to invest 100 trillion won in Cheongju, citing rapidly growing demand for NAND flash storage driven by AI services and the need to expand production capacity beyond its existing facilities.
The world's second-largest memory chipmaker said 80 trillion won will be invested in constructing its M17 NAND fabrication plant, while another 20 trillion won will be allocated to P&T7, an advanced packaging facility scheduled for completion by the end of 2027. Construction of the M17 fab is expected to begin next year, with operations targeted for the first half of 2029.
Chief Executive Kwak Noh-jung said enterprise solid-state drives and NAND flash demand are expected to rise sharply as agentic AI and physical AI become more widely deployed, requiring additional manufacturing capacity.
"Cheongju is the most efficient location for rapidly building new NAND production capacity because it already has the land, electricity and industrial water infrastructure needed for expansion," Kwak said.
The company also plans to build a 1-gigawatt AI data center in Chungcheong as part of SK Group's broader strategy to develop up to 15 GW of AI data center capacity nationwide, integrating semiconductor manufacturing with AI computing infrastructure.
The Chungcheong investment blueprint follows the government's announcement earlier this week of large-scale advanced industry projects for the Honam region, underscoring Lee's broader strategy of dispersing semiconductor and AI infrastructure beyond the Seoul metropolitan area through region-specific industrial clusters.
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