February 13, 2025
SEOUL – As technology and engineering schools are gaining prominence in chip powerhouses like the US and China, Korea’s semiconductor industry is grappling to secure top talent amid a nationwide boom in medical schools.
With medical schools siphoning off top talent like a “black hole,” chip experts are calling for strategic investment to foster chip engineers to ensure the future competitiveness of the all-important industry.
“Chinese AI startup DeepSeek shook the global tech world with a breakthrough led by a 30-year-old homegrown prodigy. This is the result of China’s massive investment in the field to foster talent,” said Lee Jong-hwan, a system semiconductor engineering professor at Sangmyung University.
“In Korea, top talent is drawn to medical schools. At prestigious universities, even those enrolled often retake the college entrance exam to pursue medical school.”
According to the latest 2024 figures from Jongro Hagwon, a leading private education institute, the admission withdrawal rate for the country’s top five semiconductor departments was 179 percent, meaning the number of students who chose not to attend the programs after being admitted was nearly double the number of available spots.
Even though the programs guarantee employment at Samsung Electronics and SK hynix after graduation — having been established in partnership with the chipmakers — top-tier students are giving up their seats to pursue medical careers, according to the private education institute.
Securing top talent has become the top priority for the global semiconductor industry amid intensifying competition. But Korea is expected to face a shortage of about 56,000 chip engineers in 2031, according to the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy.
“China is set to invest 1,800 trillion won in the AI sector over the next five years until 2030. The US is also committing $500 billion under the Stargate Project. Korea’s investment last year amounted to just 1.8 trillion won,” said Rep. Ahn Cheol-soo of the ruling People Power Party, formerly a physician and a computer entrepreneur who founded AhnLab.
“How can we catch up? China has 410,000 AI researchers and the US has 200,000. South Korea has fewer than 20,000.”
Noting that AI is the key technology leading the fourth industrial revolution, the lawmaker warned, “if we fall behind now, Korea will be left with no path but decline.”
The Korean government has been bolstering its talent cultivation policy, and as a result, the number of semiconductor-related departments at four-year universities increased from 381 in 2022 to 396 last year.
But experts point out that establishing more systematic and structured plans is more important than simply renaming school departments.
“There is a lack of consensus on what kind of talent should be cultivated in the semiconductor field. The government should come up with a roadmap of what kinds of professionals are needed and how we should train them,” Lee Byoung-hun, an electronics engineering professor at Pohang University of Science and Technology, said.
“Because there is not a clear goal for the types of talent we want to nurture, we are just teaching the basics of semiconductors, nothing more or less than what we have always done.”
The bigger challenge lies in securing graduate-level talent, the small group coveted by chip giants worldwide.
China, for instance, produces 80,000 Ph.D. students in science and technology field, and 1.5 million engineering graduates, annually. Aside from population differences, Korea is struggling to attract highly-educated students into its workforce, as few pursue further study in the field. Even when they do, they are often recruited by global chip giants offering significantly higher salaries.
“I had received a job offer from Qualcomm, but I chose Samsung, and I was an unusual case among my colleagues,” said a semiconductor engineer with a Ph.D. in chip engineering from a top-tier university here, speaking on the condition of anonymity.
He added that a senior executive from the chipmaker came in direct contact to recruit him.
At the top-tier contract departments, the graduate school enrollment rate remains low, especially because these programs offer direct employment at the semiconductor companies. For instance, at Sungkyunkwan University’s semiconductor systems engineering department in partnership with Samsung, the graduate school enrollment rate has been declining, from 17.6 percent in 2021 to 15.8 percent in 2023.
“Social perceptions and treatment of the semiconductor and engineering fields should undergo significant changes for the future of the chip industry,” said Lee of Sangmyung University.