Chey Tae-won, chairman of SK Group, met President Lee Jae-myung on the 16th and said about domestic investment plans, "Investments totaling 600 trillion won will continue going forward."
Chey said this at the "public-private joint meeting following the U.S.-Korea tariff negotiations," held at the presidential office in Yongsan, Seoul, on the afternoon of the same day, noting, "As uncertainties in the trade environment have been resolved, domestic corporations will continue efforts to generate the fruits of real economic growth."
Chey expressed his appreciation, saying, "I thank you for leading the negotiations so well with prudent and decisive leadership."
He went on, "I also extend deep thanks to the negotiation team that approached the talks with meticulous preparation. We had been continuing preparations for APEC (Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation), and I was really anxious about whether things would go well with the tariff negotiations overlapping. It seems the successful negotiations also led to the success of APEC."
President Lee on this day asked the heads of large conglomerates to boost domestic investment and revitalize regional industries. Chey said, "SK Group also plans to move more proactively on domestic investment and hiring," adding, "Originally, we planned 128 trillion won in domestic investment through 2028. But investment costs keep rising due to increased demand for semiconductor memory and process advancement. The more we work on it, the more it keeps changing."
He continued, "By our estimate, just our Yongin fab (silicon wafer manufacturing plant) alone will likely see about 600 trillion won in investment continue going forward. The only question of timing—how fast we can pull it forward—depends on demand-related conditions, so the investable scope is quite large. We will align closely with demand so we can invest wisely."
Regarding future hiring plans, he said, "We have steadily maintained more than 8,000 hires annually. Each time we partially open a semiconductor fab, our additional hiring increases by more than about 2,000 people. If the pace of building these fabs accelerates, I think the employment effect could reach between at least 14,000 and 20,000 per year."
On plans to revitalize the domestic advanced industry ecosystem, he said, "In the case of SK hynix, we are building the 'Trinity Fab,' an advanced testbed that verifies mass-production feasibility with semiconductor materials, parts, and equipment corporations, with an investment of 860 billion won together with the government. I believe many small and medium-sized companies and many corporations in the semiconductor supply chain will be able to develop technology at a fairly rapid pace through testing."
Chey continued, "To secure status as a global artificial intelligence (AI) hub nation, we will focus on manufacturing AI. We are cooperating with Nvidia on an AI factory. Through cooperation with AWS (Amazon Web Services) and Siemens (German technology company), we will keep working so we can contribute to the AI autonomous manufacturing plan being pursued domestically by the Industry Ministry."
On balanced regional development, he said, "We will work to build AI data centers at a faster pace. AWS is proceeding in the Yeongnam region, and OpenAI is proceeding in the Southwest region, respectively. We will continue efforts through discussions with other corporations so we can build AI data centers and infrastructure at an even faster pace."