A Feud Between Japan and South Korea Is Threatening Global Supplies of Memory Chips (cnn.com) 47
An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNN: South Korea has warned that an escalating trade dispute with Japan could hurt the global tech industry. President Moon Jae-in said Wednesday that Japan's decision to restrict exports to South Korea of materials used in memory chips are a "blow to the economy" and threaten to disrupt global supplies. Japan announced earlier this month that companies would need a government license to export three materials to South Korea. The materials -- fluorinated polyamides, photoresists and hydrogen fluoride -- are used to make memory chips and smartphones.
The export controls are a massive headache for South Korean firms Samsung and SK Hynix, who between them control over 63% of the global memory chip market, according to the latest figures from the Korea International Trade Association. South Korean firms sourced 94% of fluorinated polyamides, 92% of photoresists and about 44% of hydrogen fluoride from Japan In the first quarter of this year, data from the association showed. Samsung, the world's biggest seller of smartphones, said in a statement to CNN Business that it was "assessing the current situation and reviewing a number of measures to minimize the impact on our production."
The export controls are a massive headache for South Korean firms Samsung and SK Hynix, who between them control over 63% of the global memory chip market, according to the latest figures from the Korea International Trade Association. South Korean firms sourced 94% of fluorinated polyamides, 92% of photoresists and about 44% of hydrogen fluoride from Japan In the first quarter of this year, data from the association showed. Samsung, the world's biggest seller of smartphones, said in a statement to CNN Business that it was "assessing the current situation and reviewing a number of measures to minimize the impact on our production."
Threatening with nukes was so Cold War . . . (Score:2)
. . . now Trade Wars are in vogue.
Re: (Score:2, Offtopic)
Re:Threatening with nukes was so Cold War . . . (Score:4, Insightful)
. . . now Trade Wars are in vogue.
Kind of leading in the right direction, and I do think Abe is to some degree playing the "imitation is the sincerest form of flattery" card to keep Trump buttered up. But mostly I think Abe is imitating Trump's stupidity.
There's been a lot of coverage of this story on Japanese TV, and my closest Japanese source insists it's mostly motivated by some recent lawsuits in Korea against Japanese companies who used conscripted (effectively slave) labor during the war. You may be more familiar with the European version, where slaves from Mauthausen were provided to such companies as Volkswagen and Siemens. In Korea there was also the case of so-called comfort women, essentially sex slaves who "comforted" the troops.
However in both of these cases time is on Japan's side, though Abe seems to be too stupid to understand that. The last plaintiffs are on their last legs, and there's certainly no good reason to start a major trade war on some other pretext.
By the way, I think the winner is going to be China. Again. There's no way that Xi will let this opportunity slip away. China must be really weak in the critical supplies or they would have already stepped up to take the sales away from Japan, but I'm expecting an announcement any day now about alternative sources.
Re: (Score:2)
Hmm... Rather moot at this late date in Slashdot time, eh? Unlikely many people will ever read it now that the story has fallen off the front page. But still...
South Korea sent some negotiators to Japan. They were supposed to discuss this topic, but it appears that the discussions did not go well. At all. Of course it's hard to tell from press reports, but one possible interpretation is that this was just a facade, what they call tatemae in Japanese. Quite possible the real negotiations are going on somewhe
Re: Pretty one-sided summary (Score:5, Informative)
Japan's stance is that they paid reparations to SK as part of the treaty. My personal opinion of what Japan's stance is, "We paid SK. if they wanted their citizens compensated why didn't any of the reparations go to the forced laborers?"
SK's stance is that the treaty reparations were one thing. Personal reparations are another.
Apple Memory (Score:3)
But Why? (Score:4, Interesting)
Would be nice if the summary went little bit deeper, e.g. why this export restriction happened in the first place.
From the linked article:
Japan side (with some middle parts about WTO removed for clarity):
Re: (Score:2)
Based solely on the quotes you've provided, it looks like Japan is restricting these materials solely to try to quash lawsuits related to their keeping slaves. Is it really that simple? No wonder the US and Japan get along so well in spite of our having nuked them twice. Two peas, one pod.
regigging of supply chains (Score:3)
While this seems sort of catastrophic, what will happen is that SK semiconductor companies will buy all their photoresists and fluorinated compounds from non japanese suppliers, paying high costs, both in terms of higher shipping costs, longer delays, bigger inventories, and higher prices to lure the suppliers to abandon their ussual clients in north america, japan, china etc.
Meanwhile, the japanese suppliers will beg the other semiconductor manufacturers to get their supplies....
while the regigging takes place, some disruptions to the system will occur, but nothing like a "disruption of global suppy"
JM2C JMMV
Re: (Score:1)
Really, it's a means of price supports. Any time the market becomes saturated, threatening a price collapse, some sort of catastrophe (flood, fire, explosion) or conflict will spring up to cut back on supply.
And billions of dollars are made in the wild fluctuations in the commodities markets provoked by these stories.
roll their own (Score:3, Informative)
flourite is found all over the world (even north korea) and goes for $450 a ton. South Korea can make their own flouride compounds, nothing special about it.
Not easy for top-notch grade (Score:5, Informative)
Disclaimer : Korean here, but trying to just state the fact.
Making HF in small lab settings, or in low grade is relatively easy. Making mass manufacturing facility of top-grade pure HF suitable for semiconductor making process(99.999%) is taking a lot of money&time and, above all, really hard. I think only few fully developed(Maybe US, UK, Ger, Fra, Rus, Jpn?) country can make pure grade of it, and for some other reason(perhaps safety&environment concerns, economical concerns) now only japan is major supplier of that pure grade material. And since HF is very toxic, reactive, unstable compound it can't be contained for a long time(3 months) without dropping quality so shipping distance longer than korea-japan(very short) have some disadvantages too.
Try and try again (Score:2)
I guess that they must have thought that the recent 13 minute power outage in Japan [channelnewsasia.com] wasn't getting enough traction as an excuse to raise global RAM prices. You have got to admit that they are a persistent bunch.
Korean government cheated its own people (Score:4, Insightful)