SK Group seeks faster construction of new southwestern chip cluster

SK Group Chairman Chey Tae-won said on October 9 that the group wants to build a new semiconductor cluster in southwestern South Korea as quickly as possible. A construction start date has not been set.

Chey visited Gwangju Air Base in the Jeonnam-Gwangju region, where SK hynix has proposed the complex. He said construction would proceed as quickly as possible once the necessary conditions were met.

He linked the urgency to rising global demand for chips, saying supply needed to accelerate to keep pace with the market. The group still has to determine when work will begin.

The proposed cluster would be about two-thirds the size of the complex under construction in Yongin, south of Seoul. The visit was Chey's first to the region since the plan was announced in June.

Earlier this year, SK hynix and Samsung Electronics unveiled long-term investment projects in the region, including plans for two new memory chip fabrication plants each. Gwangju Air Base was selected as the project site in July. The government aims to begin large-scale production in 2030.