韓国半導体産業の発展プロセス

抄録

The Korean semiconductor industry has rapidly grown and accomplished remarkable achievements. In the 1990s, Korea has been the world's third-largest semiconductor supplier after only the US and Japan.
The purpose of this paper is to analyze the role of technology transfer and the industrial policy of the Korean government to develop the Korean semiconductor industry.
Intra-firm and inter-firm technology transfers have played a critical role in acquiring foreign technology and the development of the Korean semiconductor industry. Korean semiconductor firms could absorb new technology of VLSI products, collect technological information, recruit foreign educated Korean engineers from US subsidiaries of the Korean semiconductor firms. Korean firms have imported design related technology from US as well as materials and manufacturing equipment from Japan through inter-firm technology transfer.
The Korean government and ETRI (Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute) have played a critical role in stimulating technological cooperation among domestic firms. They conducted joint research and development projects on 4M, 16M/64M, 256M DRAM from 1986 to 1997.
The joint research and development projects were formed by domestic firms, public institutions and universities. ETRI, a public research institute, has played an important role in organizing and coordinating the management of the consortium. The technology exchange committee was very active in the matter of sharing information and technology among domestic firms. The consortium has been supported by public funds. The contribution of financial support reduced the huge cost of developing new products and the risk of technical uncertainties. The joint research and development projects on DRAM in the Korean semiconductor industry concentrated on product development, unlike the VLSI Research Project in 1976-1980 in Japanese semiconductor Industry and SEMATECH, the Semiconductor Manufacturing Technology consortium in US which concentrated on manufacturing equipment.