By Kim Sung-jin
Staff Reporter



Samsung Electronics Thursday unveiled a seven-year $33 billion investment plan to create the world’s largest semiconductor cluster in Korea.
The world’s second-largest chipmaker Thursday held a groundbreaking ceremony for the second-phase semiconductor complex in Hwasong, Kyonggi Province.

Samsung Electronics expects the phase two investment project to triple its annual sales to $61 billion and offer 14,000 new jobs by 2012.

The electronics giant, second only to Intel Corp. of the U.S. in the global semiconductor industry, said it will add 5,000 more engineers to its R&D workforce by 2012.

Samsung Electronics, which began its semiconductor business back in 1974, chalked up 18.2 trillion won in semiconductor revenue last year.

``We will build a total of nine new semiconductor fabrication lines in Hwasong complex including one next-generation line dedicated solely to research and development, which will produce 12-inch wafers applied with futuristic chip processing technologies more advanced than the 50-nanometer design rule,’’ said Hwang Chang-gyu, president and CEO of Samsung Electronics’ semiconductor business, at the ceremony.

The next-generation R&D line will be the newest addition to Samsung’s five existing ones where research on future advancements in memory and logic technologies, such as ferroelectric random access memory (FRAM), parameter random access memory (PRAM) and fusion memory, are conducted.

When Samsung Electronics completes the second-phase investment project in Hwasong, Korea will house the world’s single biggest semiconductor R&D and production cluster built on a 730-acre or 2-million-square-meter tract of land in Kyonggi Province.

The new facilities of the phase two project will be built on 230 acres or 960,000 square meters.

Samsung is operating 11 chip production lines that produce a wide range of microchips including dynamic random access memory (DRAM), flash memory, uni-transistor RAM (UtRAM) and System LSI (Large Scale Integrated Circuit), and four R&D facilities in its Kihung semiconductor complex, also located in Kyonggi Province.

Hwasong complex already houses five chip production lines and one R&D facility.

Samsung Electronics said it will continue to lead the global semiconductor market through bold but timely investment, a dauntless challenging spirit and tireless R&D so the chipmaker can develop technologies that will lead the world for decades.

Some market critics, however, contend that the investment plan is just a show, given the size of the electronics giant’s annual investment.

They say that Samsung has been investing roughly 4 trillion won annually into its semiconductor facilities, and taking into account the price increase and Samsung’s investment strategy, such an investment plan is nothing special. Rather, it is simply an announcement of its plan for the next seven years.

Critics speculate that the long-term investment plan could have been forged to silence the recent intense Samsung-battering by policymakers and civic groups, in order to remind the public of what Samsung defenders describe as the company’s indispensable role in the Korean economy.

sjkim@koreatimes.co.kr