South Korean Labor Woes Spur Fears of Further Advanced Memory Supply Constraints

Squeezed by the booming demand and limited labor availability, South Korea’s leading semiconductor makers are facing daunting challenges in ramping up the production of advanced memories.

HBM Demand Goes into Overdrive

Samsung and SK Hynix are now engaged in a race to boost the manufacturing of advanced high-bandwidth memory (HBM), a type of DRAM used with AI acceleration chips, most notably Nvidia’s industry-leading GPUs. With demand for AI services soaring due to the generative AI craze, HBM is now experiencing constrained supply, spurring rising prices and lengthening lead times, according to Supplyframe Commodity IQ.

SK Hynix and U.S.-based memory chip supplier Micron have sold out of HBM for all of 2024 and are nearly sold out for 2025. As a result, HBM average selling prices are soaring, with parts now costing five times as much as DDR5 DRAM. Significantly, suppliers are allocating most capacity increases to HBM production for AI applications, which could potentially limit supplies of other key memory types, specifically DDR4 and DDR5.

Samsung is boosting its capital spending on DRAM production equipment, with expenditures set to rise by 9.2% this year. The company has reportedly resumed construction of its Pyeongtaek P4 plant in South Korea, a project that had been suspended in February. The fab is set to start HBM mass production in June 2025.

Meanwhile, SK Hynix plans to invest $7.1 billion in DRAM manufacturing equipment in 2024, up from $2.3 billion in 2023. The company recently established a DRAM production line at its M15X factory located in Cheongju fab in South Korea, which will produce HBM.

Critical Staffing Shortages

However, concerns are mounting over whether the companies will be able to find sufficient staff to man these new production lines. South Korea is now facing a critical labor shortage, amid rapidly shifting employment conditions in the country.

As recently as December, the country’s jobless rate rose to 3.3%, the highest level in almost two years, according to Statistics Korea, as high interest rates and an influx of new workers helped swell the unemployment rolls.