Statuses of South Korea IC substrate industry

Supply chain disruptions caused by COVID-19 and increasing demand for advanced packaging processes had put IC substrates in tight supply.

Furthermore, pressured by the competition from rapidly rising China-based firms including Shennan Circuits and Fastprint in the printed circuit board (PCB) sector, Korea-based suppliers had no choice but to abandon their rigid-flex (RF) PCB, high density interconnect (HDI) PCB, and other PCB business with narrow profit margins and transition toward IC substrates for flip chip ball grid array (FCBGA) packaging with a higher technological barrier and profit margin.

Thanks to the decision, Korea's top three PCB suppliers SEMCO, LG Innotek and Daeduck are able to stabilize their PCB revenue and profitability by moving their focus toward higher-end product lines.

• Introduction

• The role of IC substrates in PCB

• Table 2: Semiconductor packaging methods and their relations to IC substrates

• South Korean PCB suppliers

• Revenues and comparison with international competitors

• Chart 1: Revenues of different PCB product lines in South Korea, 2019-2022 (KRWt)

• Table 4: Korean PCB maker factory layout

• Top-3 PCB makers

• Chart 2: Revenues of top-3 Korean PCB makers, 2016-2022 (KRWb)

• Chart 3: Operating profits of top-3 Korean PCB makers, 2016-2022 (KRWb)

• Summary