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President Yoon Suk-yeol of South Korea (third from left) and King Willem-Alexander of the Netherlands applaud at a banquet marking the former’s state visit to the Netherlands on Dec. 12. (pool photo/Yonhap)

The South Korean presidential office has been heavily touting its achievement of a “semiconductor alliance” with the Netherlands during a recent state visit to the country by President Yoon Suk-yeol. But the reaction from the South Korean public has been skeptical.

After Yoon’s summit Wednesday with Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte, the two sides issued a joint statement that included the phrase “semiconductor alliance.” A day earlier, Yoon had visited a cleanroom at ASML, a Dutch company that produces the most advanced semiconductor equipment.

Seoul’s presidential office played this up as if it were something enormous: the “first-ever visit to an ASML cleanroom by a foreign head of state” and “both countries’ first-ever ‘semiconductor alliance’ with a specific partner.”

A more objective perspective may be needed here.

Samsung Electronics has been cooperating with ASML on semiconductor ultra-fine process technology and equipment development since the ’00s, and its chairperson, Lee Jae-yong, visited an ASML cleanroom just last year. On Tuesday, Samsung Electronics and ASML signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) on investing 700 million euros to build an institute in South Korea for joint development of lithography equipment.

Beyond that, there have been several instances in the past where presidents on overseas tours included MOUs formed between companies in South Korea and the host country as “achievements” from the visit.

What we haven’t seen before is a president taking the lead in touting this sort of thing as some sort of instant resolution — as Yoon did when he talked about having a “semiconductor strategic meeting” with advisers on the trip to the Netherlands and presented the companies’ agreement as if it were some “semiconductor alliance” reached between states.

Is there any substance to the “semiconductor alliance” that is supposed to have been achieved?

Since taking office, the Joe Biden administration in the US has been working to contain China through a “semiconductor alliance” framework combining South Korean and Taiwanese semiconductor companies with Dutch equipment and Japanese materials and components. South Korea and the Netherlands are already cooperating under this US-created alliance framework. Are they trying to suggest that Yoon’s state visit created some sort of new semiconductor alliance?

This is why it’s so hard to find any stories in the world’s major news outlets focusing on the “semiconductor alliance” between South Korea and the Netherlands.

Also, while it is all well and fine for domestic promotion purposes to put such an emphasis on a “semiconductor alliance,” it’s questionable how much this really suits the national interest, since it stands to provoke China even further.

All this talk about semiconductor alliances is unlikely to do much to pacify a South Korean public that is becoming more and more critical of Yoon and his wife’s all-too-frequent state visits.

It’s also time to stop the practice of dragging large numbers of chaebol heads along on every visit and using them to benefit the president’s political interests. It’s the kind of embarrassing spectacle one might see in a dictatorship, and it could also plant the seeds for government-business collusion.

Please direct questions or comments to [english@hani.co.kr]