LG Semicon
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LG Semicon Co., Ltd.
LG반도체 주식회사
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| Formerly | Goldstar Electron (1989–1995)[1] | ||||||||
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| Type | Public company[1] | ||||||||
| Industry | Semiconductors[2] | ||||||||
| Founded | May 1989, as Goldstar Electron[1] | ||||||||
| Defunct | 14 October 1999[3] | ||||||||
| Fate | Acquired by Hyundai Electronics Industries and merged into it[3] | ||||||||
| Successor | SK hynix[4] | ||||||||
| Products | DRAM Application-specific chips[2] | ||||||||
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LG Semicon Co., Ltd.[note 1] (LG반도체) was a South Korean semiconductor company and the memory-chip arm of the LG Group. It existed for ten years under that name before the government pushed LG into handing it to a rival in 1999. Its factories and its people passed to Hyundai Electronics, and from there, through two more changes of owner, to SK hynix.[1][3][4]
At its height LG Semicon was one of the larger memory makers in the world, with about 10,000 staff and roughly 6% to 7% of global sales of DRAM, the working memory used in computers.[2] Its plant at Cheongju is still in use today as one of SK hynix's two main Korean campuses.[6]
The company's end is one of the most argued-over episodes in modern Korean business. It was handed to Hyundai under a government programme of forced industry swaps called the "Big Deal", set up after the 1997 Asian financial crisis. LG fought the decision for months and gave in only after its chairman was summoned to the presidential residence.[7][8]
1 History✎
1.1 Goldstar Electron (1989–1995)✎
LG chairman Koo Bon-moo set up Goldstar Electron in May 1989 to move the group into memory chips.[note 2][1] The group had been building semiconductor plants for some years already: a factory went up in the fourth zone of the Cheongju Western Industrial Complex in 1988, alongside an older site at Gumi.[5]
1.2 LG Semicon (1995–1999)✎
The company was renamed LG Semicon in 1995, when the Lucky-Goldstar group rebranded itself as LG, and its shares were listed the following year.[1][5]
By the mid-1990s it was a substantial memory maker. A United States federal court, hearing a patent case brought against it by Siemens, recorded sales of about US$3 billion in 1995. The same judgment put LG Semicon fifth in the world in DRAM that year, with about 6.6% of the world market between 1995 and 1997. It employed around 10,000 people and sold to Apple, Compaq, Dell, IBM, Hewlett-Packard and Sun through its American subsidiary in San Jose.[2]
It also developed application-specific chips and backed Rambus DRAM, a fast memory design of the period, and it had begun building a wafer plant at Newport in Wales. That project was delayed in 1998 and mothballed in April 1999.[8][9]
Then the market turned. Memory prices collapsed, and in the first half of 1998 LG Semicon lost about US$188 million. Hyundai Electronics, its larger Korean rival, lost about US$250 million over the same period.[10]
2 The Big Deal✎
After the 1997 Asian financial crisis the South Korean government decided that the country's conglomerates had too much duplicated capacity. It pressed them into a set of industry swaps known as the "Big Deal", in which each group would give up some businesses and take over others. Semiconductors were the only chip industry included, and Hyundai and LG were told to combine.[10]
2.1 The dispute over control✎
The two companies agreed in principle on 24 September 1998, but not on who would run the merged business. Both had accepted that the chosen company would hold 70% of it. LG argued that its technology and finances were the stronger, and refused to be the junior partner.[10]
To break the deadlock, the consultancy Arthur D. Little was brought in to judge which company should lead. Its report, delivered on 24 December 1998, scored Hyundai higher on all fifteen criteria it used. LG rejected the finding at once and said it would keep running its chip business on its own. LG also complained that the evaluation had not been open or objective.[7][8]
The government then applied financial pressure. The Financial Supervisory Commission threatened to block approval of domestic bank loans to LG Semicon and to call in its credit lines, and set a deadline of the end of the year.[7]
2.2 LG gives in✎
On 6 January 1999 LG chairman Koo Bon-moo went to the Blue House, the presidential residence, and met President Kim Dae-jung. He came out about half an hour later having agreed to give up the business, saying LG would abandon semiconductors for the sake of the national economy.[8][11]
LG Semicon's workers did not accept it. They struck for about three months, from late January to the end of April 1999, because Hyundai would not guarantee their jobs — it argued that protecting LG Semicon staff would be unfair to its own workforce.[8]
2.3 The sale✎
Hyundai Electronics Industries and LG signed the definitive agreement on 20 May 1999. Hyundai bought 91,223,594 shares, or 59% of LG Semicon, for ₩2.56 trillion. The money came in stages: ₩250 billion on signing, another ₩250 billion within a week, ₩1.06 trillion in July, and ₩1 trillion in promissory notes paid off in five instalments between 2000 and 2002.[12]
Hyundai took over management on 7 July 1999, handing across the promissory notes and receiving the shares. American and European competition regulators approved the deal. For a few months the two firms kept separate names, and LG Semicon was renamed Hyundai Semiconductor.[13] The legal merger completed on 14 October 1999, leaving Hyundai Electronics Industries as the surviving company.[3]
The combined business had the largest memory production capacity in the world, about 300,000 eight-inch wafers a month, and the research firm IDC expected it to become the world's biggest memory chip maker.[3]
3 Aftermath and legacy✎
The merger is widely judged in Korea to have failed on its own terms. LG's own sixtieth-anniversary corporate history, published in 2007, said the artificial semiconductor Big Deal had produced results contrary to its purpose. Lee Heon-jae, the financial regulator who ran the programme, later said many regrets remained, that market forces should have decided the outcome, and that government-led deals of the kind were bound to fail.[11]
The debt Hyundai took on to buy LG Semicon nearly destroyed the buyer as well. Hyundai Electronics renamed itself Hynix Semiconductor in 2001, separated from the Hyundai Group, and spent most of the following decade under the control of its creditor banks before SK Group bought it in 2012 and renamed it SK hynix.[4]
The Cheongju plant LG built is still running. It is now one of SK hynix's two main Korean sites, where most of its NAND flash memory is made and where its high-bandwidth memory is packaged.[6][14]
LG never fully left chips, but its main chip company later left the group. LG bought the chip designer Silicon Works in 2014.[15] In late 2020 LG split off several non-core businesses under a new holding company, LX Holdings, and Silicon Works went with them. It was renamed LX Semicon, and it designs display driver chips rather than memory.[16] LG itself kept chip design work in-house, and by 2025 was developing bonding equipment for the stacked memory used in artificial-intelligence systems.[17]
4 See also✎
- "금성일렉트론에서 LG반도체까지." FETV, June 19, 2018. fetv.co.kr. Retrieved July 2026.
- Siemens AG v. LG Semicon Co., 69 F. Supp. 2d 622 (D. Del., August 24, 1999). law.justia.com. Retrieved July 2026.
- "Hyundai Electronics Successfully Acquires Hyundai Semiconductor." SK hynix Newsroom (official), October 1999. news.skhynix.com. Retrieved July 2026.
- "History." SK hynix (official). skhynix.com/company. Retrieved July 2026.
- "청주 산업단지와 반도체." Sejong Economic News. seenews365.com. Retrieved July 2026.
- "청주 반도체 공장의 역사." Chungcheong Times, April 20, 2026. cctimes.kr. Retrieved July 2026.
- "Hyundai chosen to head LG Semicon merger." EE Times, December 24, 1998. eetimes.com. Retrieved July 2026.
- "빅딜, LG반도체는 어떻게 사라졌나." SisaON. sisaon.co.kr. Retrieved July 2026.
- "LG Semicon's Welsh fab mothballed." The Register, April 23, 1999. theregister.com. Retrieved July 2026.
- "Hyundai and LG Semicon to merge chip ops." EE Times, September 24, 1998. eetimes.com. Retrieved July 2026.
- "정부 주도 빅딜의 교훈." Electronic Times (etnews), September 2012. etnews.com. Retrieved July 2026.
- "Hyundai and LG Sign Definitive Agreement on Acquisition of LG Semicon by Hyundai Electronics Industries." SK hynix Newsroom (official), May 20, 1999. news.skhynix.com. Retrieved July 2026.
- "Hyundai Electronics (HEI) Takes Over LG Semicon Management." SK hynix Newsroom (official), July 1999. news.skhynix.com. Retrieved July 2026.
- "SK hynix Fact Sheet." SK hynix Newsroom (official). news.skhynix.com. Retrieved July 2026.
- "LG mulls semiconductor comeback." Businesskorea, April 13, 2018. businesskorea.co.kr. Retrieved July 2026.
- "Korea's LX Group seeks to acquire Magnachip Semiconductor." KED Global, April 26, 2022. kedglobal.com. Retrieved July 2026.
- "LG eyes HBM equipment as chip ambitions return." The Korea Herald, July 28, 2025. koreaherald.com. Retrieved July 2026.