These past two years, the global semiconductor spotlight has hardly ever left South Korea. HBM in short supply, SK Hynix’s market cap soaring, Samsung racing to catch up in advanced process nodes—every headline has reminded people that Korea still stands at the center of this AI computing feast.
But while mapping Korea’s OSAT (outsourced semiconductor assembly and test) landscape, an easily overlooked detail caught my attention: on Yeongjong Island next to Incheon International Airport sit two companies whose names still carry “STATS ChipPAC.” Together they employ nearly 5,000 people. At the 2025 Trade Day, they respectively took home the $2 billion and $800 million Export Tower awards—scale that stands out even among Korea’s export firms.
Their real parent company is neither Samsung nor Hynix(), but the global OSAT leader JCET (Jiangsu Changjiang Electronics Technology).
Following that thread backward, the story is far more winding than expected. The factory’s bloodline actually comes from the predecessor of today’s hottest name, SK Hynix; in historical filings, it listed Samsung Electronics in black and white as a customer. For forty years it has remained rooted in this land, growing together with Korea’s semiconductor industry.
This is a piece of industrial history that has almost never been told in full.
