Korea’s chip ambitions face hidden test: Can power lines arrive before new fabs do?

When Taiwanese chip giant TSMC broke ground in Kumamoto, Japan, the prefectural government had a task force running within nine days and a chip plant in mass production within three years.

Korea, racing to build its own semiconductor cluster in the country's southwest, is discovering that the power lines alone could take over a decade to build.

TSMC announced in October 2021 that it would build a semiconductor plant in Japan. When it formalized construction of its Kumamoto plant the following month, Kumamoto Prefecture set up what it called a "task force to strengthen semiconductor industry clustering" in just nine days.

The task force drew up a three-year road map from groundbreaking to plant completion to mass production. Mass production actually began in late 2024.

That outcome was the product of an infrastructure race in which the site, power, water and roads were not prepared separately but placed on the same timeline as the plant's construction.

That was the backdrop for President Lee Jae Myung's remark on Monday that Korea's southwestern semiconductor cluster needs to be pursued at "a pace not inferior to Kumamoto, Japan."

China has waged its own race by securing infrastructure such as power grids and water pipes first, then building semiconductor fabs afterward. Construction of Fab A at ChangXin Memory Technologies' (CXMT) Hefei plant broke ground in March 2017, with the first phase of the plant building being completed by January of the following year — just 10 months after groundbreaking.

Korea's problem is that lacks the infrastructure to support such quick developments.

A semiconductor fab can be built in around three years, but the transmission lines that power such large industrial complexes take an average of 13 years to plan and complete. Infrastructure such as power and water supply cannot keep pace with the speed of investment in advanced industries, creating a bottleneck for industrial competitiveness.

SK hynix, for instance, unveiled its investment plan for the Yongin semiconductor cluster in Gyeonggi in February 2019. At the time, the plan called for fab construction to begin after site preparation was completed in 2022, but the first fab did not actually break ground until February 2025. The goal for opening the first clean room is February 2027 — eight years after the plan was first announced.

More time was spent securing the infrastructure to support the plant than on the plant itself. Environmental impact assessments and land compensation dragged on, and disputes broke out between regions over securing water supply. The Yongin semiconductor cluster applied for permits for water supply facilities in May 2021, but negotiations were not completed until November 2022 because Yeoju, another city in Gyeonggi, which has jurisdiction over the water intake point, objected.

The timeline for transmission lines is even longer. In Korea, a 345-kilovolt transmission line takes an average of about 13 years to complete. Transmission networks currently underway are also running into bottlenecks — of the 54 major transmission and substation projects under Korea's long-term national power plan, 20 are running behind schedule, largely because of resident complaints and local permitting delays.

China, by contrast, builds large-scale transmission networks quickly under state direction. Major ultra-high-voltage direct current projects are completed in roughly two to three years.

Japan typically needs more time to build large transmission networks, but Kumamoto was able to move quickly because it pursued its power supply network alongside other infrastructure such as water and transportation immediately after attracting the plant, and because it could make use of existing power grids.

"What is key to the pace of fab expansion at companies like CXMT and Yangtze Memory Technologies is construction done in advance — substations and water pipes are already in place and waiting for the moment a fab goes in," said Kwon Seok-joon, a professor of chemical engineering at Sungkyunkwan University. "Semiconductors are a timing-driven industry. If Korea's situation continues, where a fab can be built in three years, but transmission lines take 10, it could lead to a loss of market competitiveness."

Amid already significant delays in infrastructure construction, the amount of electricity and water required by semiconductor plants and data centers is exceeding even previous demand projections. The southwestern semiconductor cluster will need large amounts of power for semiconductor fabs and AI data centers. The industrial water needed for the new semiconductor industrial complex alone is estimated at 650,000 tons a day — more than the current daily supply of tap water for the entire city of Gwangju, a city of over 1.4 million people.

"In the past, we could predict power and water demand to some degree based mainly on population changes, but the kind of sudden, large-scale demand concentrated in a specific area that we're seeing with data centers and semiconductors is a problem that didn't exist before," an official at the Ministry of Climate, Energy and Environment said.

More sophisticated and consistent planning than in the past is needed, but the bodies responsible for carrying it out are split across different ministries. The Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport is in charge of designating national industrial complexes and transportation networks such as roads and railways, while the Ministry of Climate, Energy and Environment handles power and tap and industrial water. The creation of the Ministry of Climate, Energy and Environment, launched in October 2025, brought power and water under one ministry, but they still operate under separate systems — power under the basic plan for electricity supply and demand and long-term transmission and substation facility plans, and water under water supply and water resources-related plans.

There are silos within water policy as well. Agricultural water, which accounts for 63.1 percent of Korea's total water use, is handled by the Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs, while tap and industrial water fall under the Ministry of Climate, Energy and Environment. Even when advanced industries suddenly need large volumes of water, the structure makes it difficult to treat the country's water resources as a whole and adjust usage or supply priorities accordingly. "There are silos between the Ministry of Climate, Energy and Environment and the Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs on water issues too, which makes it difficult to use water efficiently in many respects," said Park Joon-hong, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at Yonsei University.

For major projects that the president personally oversees, such as the southwestern semiconductor cluster, cross-ministry coordination can align the timing of site preparation with power and water supply. The government, too, is pursuing the active supply of power, water and sites on a cross-ministry basis. But there are warnings that relying on case-by-case coordination through the president or governmentwide meetings each time a major project arises has limits in responding to the rapidly growing demands of advanced industries.

"If power grid, road, rail and industrial complex plans continue to move separately as they do now, we're bound to keep repeating double and triple investment — laying roads first, then digging them up again later to lay transmission lines," said Cho Hong-chong, a professor of economics at Dankook University. "We need a national-level system that puts industrial siting and major infrastructure plans — power, water, roads, rail — on a single timeline from the start and coordinates investment priorities over a span of decades."

BY AHN HYO-SEONG [lee.jian@joongang.co.kr]