Chey Tae-won: “Don’t buy and sell SK hynix shares; just hold on to them. They will keep trending upward”

[Jeju = Reporter Jo Eun-hyo] "Don’t buy and sell; just keep holding on to them."
Chey Tae-won, chairman of KCCI, said on the 17th that SK hynix shares will trend upward over time because memory will continue to be needed in the future.
Speaking at the KCCI Jeju Forum held at the Shilla Hotel in Seogwipo City, Jeju, he advised, "I don’t know what the stock price will do next month, but holding on to it may be the best way to preserve your assets."
In a discussion with Professor Seok-jun Kwon of Sungkyunkwan University, moderated by Lee Jae-wook, head of Seoul National University’s AI Virtual Lab, Chey stressed that "AI is still like a 4-year-old child, but memory will inevitably be used as it grows into adulthood." He added, "That demand has no choice but to grow exponentially." He also explained, "The reason stock prices sometimes jump tenfold is because of this phenomenon. When the outlook improves, prices rise, and when it seems less promising, they can fall sharply. Sometimes they rise so fast that reality has to catch up."
SK hynix briefly climbed to 2,987,000 won during trading on June 25, pushing its market capitalization past 2,000 trillion won. It later showed sharp volatility and closed at 1,842,000 won on the 16th. Its current market capitalization is in the 1,300 trillion won range.
On South Korea’s AI strategy in response to U.S.-China competition, Chey said, "The future of AI is not just an industry issue, but a matter of national security." He analyzed that "the United States is approaching it from a quality perspective, while China’s strategy is to gain a price advantage." He added, "It is difficult for South Korea to lower token costs, and it is also hard to beat the United States on quality. We need to build infrastructure, create the applications we need on top of it, and develop niche markets." He went on to say, "We should not keep selling only memory. We need to create and sell computing capacity. In the future, we must shift our strategy from exporting products to exporting intelligence."
Asked about the kind of talent needed in the AI era, Chey said, "Future education should not be about rote learning. It should focus on finding what is useful in human life." He added, "SK hynix recently announced that a college degree is not required for hiring. The era when only university graduates were considered talented is over." He also said, "Even if AI seems to understand, it cannot empathize. A compassionate mindset and compassionate action will be important in the future." He continued, "There will be more startups, which means more failures as well. At that point, we will need people with strong resilience. We must learn from failure and become better people."
Chey said, "In the era of AI agents, the first thing we should think about is not cutting costs. Instead, we need to keep finding new tasks for the people who remain, things they have not done before and never thought of doing. That is how a company moves toward growth." He added, "Employees can become all-round players who are not limited to a specific role, and they can work like freelancers with multiple jobs, not just as people who work for one company."

ehcho@fnnews.com Reporter Jo Eun-hyo Reporter