Semiconductors, data centers, physical AI form 'industrial triangle' of AI era

'AI data centers better suited for regions outside Greater Seoul'

'Manufacturing edge built in semiconductor era becomes weapon in physical AI era'

'Not the sum of three industries, but a single national-level AI platform'

Kim Yong-beom, chief of the Cheong Wa Dae Policy Office, attends a roundtable on the future vision for South Korea's shipbuilding industry, hosted by President Lee Jae Myung at Hotel Hyundai by Lahan Ulsan on May 13. [Yonhap]
Kim Yong-beom, chief of the Cheong Wa Dae Policy Office, attends a roundtable on the future vision for South Korea's shipbuilding industry, hosted by President Lee Jae Myung at Hotel Hyundai by Lahan Ulsan on May 13. [Yonhap]

Kim Yong-beom, chief of the Cheong Wa Dae Policy Office, on Wednesday unveiled a national AI industry strategy he called "Project Trinity," saying South Korea has a rare opportunity to become more than a parts supplier. "Korea is one of the few countries that simultaneously possesses semiconductors, power infrastructure and advanced manufacturing," Kim said. "When these three interlock, Korea can become not merely a country that supplies components but a hub that underpins the entire AI supply chain."

Kim, who is accompanying President Lee Jae Myung on a state visit to Italy, laid out the strategy in a Facebook post Wednesday, designating semiconductors, data centers and physical AI as the "industrial triangle of the AI era."

He said the three pipelines are being reconfigured globally, and that as the United States, China and Taiwan — each dominant in one of those sectors — face mounting difficulties, South Korea stands to find new opportunities.

"Excel at only one and you stop there," Kim said. "Semiconductors alone make you a parts-selling country. Power grids alone make you a server-rental country. Manufacturing capacity alone keeps you a contract production base for commodity hardware. Connect all three and your position changes entirely." He added that while many companies design AI, few countries can offer an entire supply chain — training AI at scale, supplying semiconductors and deploying AI in the real world. "The strategic value of the AI era comes not from the model itself but from providing the infrastructure the model cannot run without," he said.

Kim said the three pillars reinforce one another in a cycle that accelerates growth, giving South Korea a competitive edge. On AI data centers in particular, he said they are "not digital warehouses stacked with servers" but integrated systems where power efficiency, cooling, packaging, memory architecture and network design all work in concert. "The more AI infrastructure is built domestically, the more South Korean chipmakers gain opportunities to test and co-develop next-generation memory, packaging and inference chips in real operating environments," he said.

He also said AI data centers are better suited for regions outside the Greater Seoul area — places with surplus power or proximity to generation facilities — and described building data centers as "an act of creating industry," citing the broader positive effects.

"If Korea concentrates on building large-scale AI data centers, that process will not end as infrastructure investment — it will become a path to acquiring new industrial capabilities," Kim said. Just as the semiconductor industry nurtured an ecosystem of materials, components and equipment by building and operating fabs, he said, data centers can simultaneously elevate fields such as cooling, power management, engineering, procurement and construction, operational software and network equipment.

He acknowledged that data centers themselves employ relatively few on-site workers, but said the real value lies in the industries that form around them — construction and engineering firms handling design and build-out, cooling and power management suppliers, operations and maintenance providers, and network equipment partners. "When these players put down roots in a region, the data center becomes not a facility that simply consumes power and moves on, but a hub for local industry and tax revenue," he said. Siting data centers outside the Greater Seoul area, he added, would also ease the concentration of activity in the capital region and plant advanced industrial foundations in the provinces.

Kim also called physical AI "the second semiconductor," saying South Korea's advantage goes beyond the ability to manufacture robots well. "What sets Korea apart is that it also has the industrial sites to operate and train robots at scale," he said. "Korea can secure that environment at world-class manufacturing facilities."

He said South Korea's strength in the physical AI race lies not in building superior AI models but in the ability to run AI reliably in the real world. "The manufacturing competitiveness accumulated during the semiconductor era can serve as a weapon in the physical AI era for exactly that reason," he said.

Kim reiterated the need for a national AI industry strategy. "Competition in the AI era is no longer a company-versus-company fight," he said. "It is a comprehensive, nation-level contest in which computing power, semiconductor supply chains and the manufacturing capacity to deploy AI in the real world are bundled together." He said Korea is one of the rare countries with world-class competitiveness across all three, and that the opportunity lies not at some future point when all three industries have fully matured, but "here and now, as global supply chains are being redrawn wholesale."

He went on to say that Project Trinity is not about developing the three industries separately, but about "binding semiconductors, data centers and physical AI into a single circular structure to make Korea a core hub of the AI supply chain." "As global supply chains are being redrawn, Korea has the chance to stand at the center," he said.


moone@heraldcorp.com