According to BusinessKorea, Japan may extend export restrictions to semiconductor and display panel industry process equipment, which will once again bring heavy losses to Korean related industries.
The report pointed out that Korean semiconductor and display manufacturers rely heavily on Japanese equipment. At present, wafers imported from Japan account for more than 50% of the total wafer usage of Korean semiconductor manufacturers, which means that once the Japanese government restricts wafer exports, Korean semiconductor manufacturers such as Samsung and SK Hynix will face a crisis of production downtime.
In fact, since the beginning of the export control of semiconductor materials to Korea on July 4th, people in the Korean semiconductor industry have already pointed out this possibility. At the time, industry insiders said that semiconductor equipment procurement may face the same problem.
Korean semiconductor manufacturers import a large number of equipments for exposure, deposition, etching and testing from Tokyo Electronics, Canon, and Nikon. According to relevant reports, Japanese semiconductor equipment accounted for 32% of South Korea's imported equipment last year. The data also pointed out that Korean domestic semiconductor equipment market share is only 20%, Japanese equipment market share is as high as 46.9%, and wet etching, cleaning and transport equipment is up to 80% ~90%.
In terms of the display panel, the problem is more prominent. According to the data, Japanese equipment has reached 82.9% of the total number of imported equipment in South Korea, while dry etching equipment and OLED image forming equipment are 100% dependent on imports from Japan.
