A 392 Trillion Won Semiconductor Investment Wave Is Flowing Into the Chungcheong Region... South Chungcheong Province to Secure Its Status as an 'AI Capital' with 202 Trillion Won

[Financial News, Hongseong County = Reporter Kim Won-joon] A massive 392 trillion won in semiconductor investment is set to flow into the Chungcheong Region. More than half of that, or 202 trillion won, will go to South Chungcheong Province, accelerating the province's push to become Korea's de facto capital for artificial intelligence and semiconductors.
South Chungcheong Province said on July 2 that it held the "National Briefing on the Vision for Advanced Industry Development in the Chungcheong Region" at Samsung Display's Asan Second Campus, with about 200 people from politics and business in attendance, including Governor Park Soo-hyun, President Lee Jae-myung and Samsung Electronics Chairman Lee Jae-yong.
At the event, major domestic conglomerates including Samsung Electronics, SK hynix and Celltrion Group unveiled their investment plans for the Chungcheong Region, along with MOTIE's strategy to foster next-generation advanced industries. Governors and mayors from the region's four cities and provinces, including Park Soo-hyun, Daejeon Mayor Heo Tae-jeong, Sejong City Mayor Cho Sang-ho and North Chungcheong Province Governor Shin Yong-han, also attended and signed a large-scale memorandum of understanding (MOU) with Deputy Prime Minister Koo Yun-cheol, Minister of Trade, Industry and Energy Kim Jung-kwan, Minister of Planning and Budget Park Hong-keun, Minister of Education Choi Kyo-jin, Samsung Display CEO Chung Yi, SK hynix CEO Kwak Noh-jung and Celltrion Chairman Seo Jung-jin. Under the agreement, the conglomerates will invest a total of 392 trillion won in key future industries such as semiconductors, displays, secondary batteries and biotech across the Chungcheong Region. Of that amount, the 202 trillion won allocated to South Chungcheong Province is the largest investment ever recorded in the region.
Specifically, Samsung Electronics will invest 56 trillion won in Cheonan and Asan to build a cutting-edge high-bandwidth memory (HBM) hub, while Samsung Display will spend 67 trillion won in Asan to expand its next-generation production lines. Samsung SDI plans to invest 9 trillion won in Cheonan to establish a next-generation battery mother factory. SK will also pour in 70 trillion won to build a large-scale AI data center, and Celltrion has pledged to carry out without delay the 300 billion won investment it previously announced for the Naepo agro-bio convergence industrial cluster.
For this 202 trillion won investment package to succeed, the timely supply of electricity and industrial water, both essential prerequisites for semiconductor fabs and AI data centers, will be a key turning point. Accordingly, how quickly South Chungcheong Province can conclude infrastructure and permitting negotiations with KEPCO and K-water through a joint task force to be launched this year is expected to determine when companies can actually break ground. Local business circles say the Chungcheong Region's massive investment drive could help shift the southern boundary of advanced industry, which has been concentrated in the Seoul metropolitan area, toward the Chungcheong Region.
South Chungcheong Province will support rapid changes to urban plans and permitting procedures so the large-scale investments can quickly translate into economic effects, while also stepping up efforts to train specialized talent. It will produce large numbers of field workers through semiconductor-specialized universities and Meister high schools, and will inject 10 billion won in research and development funding over five years to nurture materials, parts, and equipment companies. In addition, the province plans to expand its investment fund, which stood at about 600 billion won at the end of last year, to 1.5 trillion won by 2030, more than doubling its size to support the industrial ecosystem.
South Chungcheong Province Governor Park Soo-hyun said, "For the roughly five years it will take before new large-scale investments in the Seoul metropolitan area begin operating, the Chungcheong Region will be the one to safeguard the fate of Korea's semiconductor industry." He added, "If we establish a manufacturing AI standard in prepared Chungnam, complete verification, and then link it with semiconductor complexes in Honam, we can advance the country's AI manufacturing innovation by more than five years."
kwj5797@fnnews.com Kim Won-joon Reporter