SK Group Chairman Chey Tae-won has issued a blunt warning to South Korea's semiconductor industry: in the accelerating capacity race between the United States and China, any delay in expansion will cost Korean chipmakers market share.

"US-China Semiconductor Expansion Race — If We're Late, South Korea Loses Market Share," Chey said, framing the industry's challenge as a question of speed rather than technology alone, BigGo Finance reports.

Why is the chairman of SK Group speaking out?

Chey chairs SK Group, the parent of SK Hynix — the world's second-largest memory maker and a key supplier of high-bandwidth memory used in AI accelerators. His public framing of the US-China buildout as a race carries weight because SK's own capital spending decisions directly shape global DRAM and NAND supply.

The statement positions expansion timing as a survival issue. If Korean fabs come online later than competing capacity in the US and China, customers will lock in alternative suppliers, and share, once lost, is difficult to recover.

What does the US-China expansion race mean for Korea?

Both Washington and Beijing are pushing aggressive semiconductor capacity programs — the US through subsidies tied to domestic manufacturing, China through sustained state-backed investment across mature and advanced nodes. Korean producers must decide where, when and how fast to add wafer capacity while navigating export controls and incentives on both sides.

Chey's warning implies that sitting out the race — or expanding too slowly — is itself a strategic choice with a measurable cost: lost market share in memory and logic markets where buyers qualify second sources precisely to reduce dependence on any single supplier.

What is at stake for South Korea?

Semiconductors are South Korea's largest export category, and the industry's duopoly structure in memory — SK Hynix and Samsung Electronics — underpins the country's trade balance. Chey's framing suggests that this position is not guaranteed.

The competitive logic is straightforward. New fabs in the US and China add supply and deepen customer relationships in the two largest semiconductor markets. Korean producers that lag in adding capacity risk ceding pricing power and long-term supply agreements to rivals with faster buildout schedules.

The road ahead

Chey's message signals that SK Group views the next round of capacity decisions as decisive: the winners of the US-China expansion race will set the supply and share map for years, and Korea cannot afford to arrive late.