Operator finance Kang Zhao/article

Korea s semiconductor exports in the first quarter fell 40 percent from a year earlier, and chip exports to China plunged 44.5 percent. When Korea s semiconductor exports to China have fallen to such a low level, Yoon wants Korea to join the Chip Quadripartite alliance led by the U.S. is trying to ruin the Korean semiconductor industry s efforts in China over the years?

At present, Korea's semiconductor export to China is already in crisis. In April this year, Korea's chip export, the main export product, fell by 41% year-on-year. And it is not only this year, since last August, Korea's semiconductor export to China has been declining continuously, but in the first quarter of this year. A large part of the reason for this is that Korea joined the Chip Quadrilateral alliance supported by the United States and imagined that the Chinese mainland semiconductor industry would be gradually isolated. Although it did cause a lot of trouble for the Chinese mainland semiconductor industry, in fact, Korea's own semiconductor industry suffered greatly.

This has had a negative impact on the Korean economy as a whole. Statistics show that South Korea's export quota to China in the first quarter of this year fell 28% from the same period last year, a large part of this is because of the decline of South Korea's semiconductor exports to China.

According to the Bank of Korea, South Korea's gross domestic product grew 0.3% quarter-on-quarter in the first quarter of this year, a far cry from China's and a sign that South Korea is completely missing out on China's recovery.

South Korea dropped out of the world's top 10 countries in terms of GDP, while Russia moved into eighth place. It is also funny that Korea's GDP is surpassed by Russia's.

South Korea has had a trade surplus with China for nearly 30 years, but it has been in deficit for many months since last year.

South Korea should reflect that this is actually man-made. On the one hand, the United States is putting pressure on South Korea. It is said that the three largest memory chip companies in the world are Micron Technology of the United States, Samsung and SK Hynix of South Korea. China cracked down hard on Micron last year, which would have been a good time for Korean products, but the U.S. took the opportunity to argue that South Korea could not fill the market gap left by Micron Technology, and South Korea probably complied, leading to a sharp drop in Korean chip exports to China.

If South Korea keeps listening to the United States, it will be seriously fooled. If South Korea follows America's lead and tries to decouple its semiconductor industry from China, it will pay a much higher price, since chips account for 20 percent of its exports. Of that, 60 percent of South Korea's chip exports now go to China. And Korea's semiconductor products are not irreplaceable -- simply, if Samsung and SK Hynix no longer want to export memory chips to China, China's Cheung Kong could take over the market. This could be a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for Cheung Kong, much like Huawei's HarmonyOS took off after Google banned its Android operating system. South Korea is too late to regret.