사진 확대 A panoramic view of Samsung Electronics’ Pyeongtaek Campus located in Pyeongtaek, Gyeonggi-do. Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd
The semiconductor industry in Gyeonggi Province is speeding up again as the regulatory threshold applied to the metropolitan area in the government’s semiconductor policy has been lowered and the floor area ratio has been raised in connection with Samsung Electronics’ Pyeongtaek Campus.
According to Gyeonggi Province and Pyeongtaek City on the 20th, the phrase “It will be outside the metropolitan area,” which was originally considered as a requirement for applying for a plan to create a semiconductor cluster, was finally deleted from the Enforcement Decree of the Special Act on Strengthening and Supporting the Semiconductor Industry, which took effect on the 11th. As a result, the Gyeonggi provincial government, which has the largest semiconductor production and research base in Korea, will be able to enter the competition for designation of semiconductor clusters.
Initially, the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy’s draft enforcement ordinance, which inquired about the opinions of related ministries and cities and provinces in May, included limiting the application of the semiconductor cluster creation plan to the non-metropolitan area. If the enforcement ordinance was confirmed as it is, Gyeonggi Province, where major semiconductor companies and related industries, including Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix, are concentrated, could have been excluded from the application for designation of semiconductor clusters.
Gyeonggi Province continued to demand the government to revise such regulations during the legislative notice process, saying they do not fit the reality of the domestic semiconductor industry. In collaboration with 19 cities and counties in the province, he submitted opinions for improvement, visited the Ministry of Industry several times, and responded to local lawmakers.
Eventually, the enforcement ordinance excluded the provision that excludes the Seoul metropolitan area from the application. Preferential treatment rules for non-metropolitan areas have also been partially eased. When designating semiconductor clusters and supporting tenant companies and institutions, the content that the non-metropolitan area should be given “priority” has been changed to “consideration first.”
The province has begun work to link the secured application qualifications to the actual cluster designation. It plans to start a policy study with the Gyeonggi Research Institute for “Application for Designation of Semiconductor Clusters” and come up with a basic plan and a plan to create a cluster that connects major semiconductor industry bases in the province.
The plan is to actively utilize the strengths of Gyeonggi Province, which has world-class production bases such as Samsung Electronics’ Pyeongtaek Campus, Yongin Advanced System Semiconductor National Industrial Complex, and Yongin Semiconductor Cluster, to designate clusters. In particular, in Pyeongtaek, a separate deregulation process is underway to raise semiconductor production capacity to the next level. The province is considering changing the industrial complex plan for Samsung Electronics’ Pyeongtaek Campus, which was recently submitted by Pyeongtaek City. The key to the change is to increase the floor area ratio of A1-1, an industrial site in Pyeongtaek Campus, from 350% to 490%.
This is a follow-up measure after Samsung Electronics’ Pyeongtaek semiconductor business was designated as a “national high-tech strategic industry specialized complex” in July 2023. Specialized complexes will be subject to special cases that can increase the floor area ratio by up to 1.4 times compared to the previous one to support corporate investment and production facilities expansion.
If the floor area ratio is confirmed, the size of the P5 fab that Samsung Electronics is currently building in Pyeongtaek Campus is also expected to increase. Samsung Electronics is building two fabs, P5-1 and P5-2, with the goal of completing them in 2030 on the A1-1 site. In the current floor area ratio, it is planned to be two-story, but after raising it, a plan to build it on a three-story scale is being promoted. If Fab is raised from the second floor to the third floor, it can significantly increase semiconductor production capacity while using the same paper. The existing second-floor fab has only four clean rooms that produce semiconductors, but if it is built as a third-floor, six can be installed, which is expected to expand production capacity by 1.5 times even if simply calculated.
The change in the industrial complex plan will be finally approved after Gyeonggi Province reviews it and passes the industrial location policy review by the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport. Pyeongtaek City expects the related process to be completed in November after deliberation by the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport in October unless there are special variables.
Samsung Electronics’ Pyeongtaek Campus is a single semiconductor industrial complex built on about 3.9 million square meters of land in Godeok-dong, Pyeongtaek, and three fabs are currently in operation. In addition, if P5 construction and an increase in floor area ratio are combined, Pyeongtaek’s role as a semiconductor production base is expected to increase. An official from Gyeonggi-do said, “We will come up with a plan to create a cluster that can enhance the competitiveness of the semiconductor industry in Gyeonggi-do by fully reflecting the opinions of cities, companies, and research institutes.”
[Reporter Lee Daehyun of Pyeongtaek]