Partners in Chips: Pathways for Korea-Japan Cooperation in Semiconductors

Complementing mutual strengths to enhance economic security South Korea and Japan face a shared set of pressures, including the social and structural strains of population aging and low birth rates, slowing economic growth, and an intensifying turn toward protectionism exemplified by tariff wars, and these pressures are making cooperation between the two countries increasingly necessary. This study examines, as one component of broader Korea-Japan industrial cooperation, the areas in which the two countries can work together within the semiconductor industry, one of the advanced strategic industries. Korea has built its semiconductor ecosystem around memory chips, while Japan has built its own around system semiconductors together with materials and equipment. Drawing on the two countries' current positions in the global semiconductor industry, this study assesses cooperation in materials, parts, and equipment; cooperation in back-end processes; and fabless cooperation in system semiconductors as practical avenues for bilateral collaboration. This paper was translated from the original Korean using the Claude Opus 4.8 large language model (LLM). The translated text was professionally edited and reviewed by the authors prior to publication.