Chip war: South Korean think tank finds China ahead in key semiconductor technologies

South Korea is lagging behind or matching China in “basic competency” in five areas of semiconductor technology, including memory chips and artificial intelligence (AI) chips, according to a report released last week by the Korea Institute of Science & Technology Evaluation and Planning.

The think tank report, based on a survey of 39 South Korean experts in the semiconductor sector in 2024, is the latest sign of how China is catching up with global leaders despite US restrictions on the country’s access to advanced chips and chipmaking technologies.

Notably, China has surpassed South Korea to rank second in memory chip technologies, an area where the Asian country has long held an advantage through its major memory chipmakers such as Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix. China is now only behind the US in this field.

That marks a contrast with a previous report by the same institute in 2022, when South Korea ranked second in both memory and advanced packaging technologies. China ranked third and fourth in the two areas, respectively.

“Even in the memory market, where Korea had maintained its unrivalled status, Chinese semiconductor companies are increasing their market share,” according to the latest report, which added that China is increasing its volume of legacy chips “with little technology gap”.

China has also narrowed the gap with South Korea in advanced chip packaging technologies, the report says, as the two countries achieved the same score of 74.2 in basic competency, after the US, Japan and Taiwan.

In the area of high-performance and low-power artificial intelligence (AI) semiconductors, China is only second to the US, maintaining its advantage over South Korea since 2022.