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Taiwan and South Korea, once tech industry rivals, are joining forces under geopolitical pressure
- Tech firms from Taiwan and South Korea are seeking increased cooperation despite still also competing as global exporters of tech hardware
- Along with Japan, both are part of the US-led ‘Chip 4’ alliance that aims to strengthen a semiconductor supply chain excluding China amid rising geopolitical tensions
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Taiwanese app developer Gogolook counts South Korea as one of its top seven markets worldwide.
Its Whoscall app for phone scam detection has been used in South Korea since 2012 and Korean online services platform Naver became an investor in the company in 2013.
“Whoscall remains popular in the Korean market, where it shows a great demand from caller ID apps,” company spokesman Marco Tsai said.
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The Taiwanese developer, with 100 million app downloads worldwide, is no outlier.
Tech firms from the two Asian economies, that industrialised quickly around the same time around half a century ago, are scoping each other out more lately as business allies rather than competitors.
Economically, South Korea and Taiwan are still competitors, but they will show a more cooperative attitude toward science and technology
They still compete as fellow exporters of tech hardware, but now they are keen on working together to weather world geopolitical shifts, including hard questions about China and US pressure to join its chip supply chain.
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