India-Korea Semiconductor Agreement Opens the Door to Korean Memory Company Investment
India and South Korea have concluded a semiconductor supply chain cooperation agreement that addresses the bilateral dimensions of semiconductor technology collaboration, manufacturing investment facilitation, and equipment export streamlining. The agreement, signed during a bilateral summit, establishes a framework for Korean semiconductor companies including Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix to evaluate and potentially establish or expand India-based OSAT operations for their memory chip packaging, creates a joint research programme on advanced semiconductor process integration that will involve Korean universities and companies alongside Indian institutions and ISM-approved facilities, and implements an equipment export streamlining mechanism analogous to the provisions in India's ICET semiconductor agreement with the United States. South Korea is the world's largest producer of DRAM and NAND flash memory chips, and the agreement positions India as a preferred geography for Korean companies seeking to diversify their packaging supply chains outside China in response to geopolitical considerations.
Memory Chip Packaging and the Korea Connection
Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix together account for approximately 70 percent of global DRAM production and roughly 50 percent of global NAND flash production. Both companies currently rely heavily on packaging operations in China for their memory products, a geographic concentration that has become a supply chain risk factor given US export control escalation in the semiconductor sector and the geopolitical uncertainties around Taiwan Strait stability. India's growing OSAT infrastructure, anchored by Micron's Sanand facility which already packages DRAM in India, provides a reference case for Korean memory companies evaluating India as a packaging location. The bilateral agreement's investment facilitation framework provides Korean companies with the regulatory clarity, ISM subsidy access terms, and land and infrastructure support commitments that are prerequisites for a capital investment decision of the scale that a major Korean memory company OSAT facility would require.
Joint Research Programme Content
The joint semiconductor research programme between India and South Korea will focus on two technical areas identified as mutual priorities. First, advanced DRAM cell scaling research addressing the transition from planar to three-dimensional cell architectures and the materials challenges of achieving the required capacitance in progressively smaller cell areas, a frontier area for Samsung and SK Hynix's research organisations that Indian academic institutions want to engage with. Second, heterogeneous integration and advanced packaging process research covering the high-bandwidth memory stacking processes used in HBM memory for AI accelerators, where both countries have industrial interest in advancing the manufacturing technology. The research programme is funded at a modest initial level and is intended to create personal and institutional relationships that can grow into larger collaborative projects as the India-Korea semiconductor relationship deepens.
Geopolitical Context and India's Non-China Alternative Positioning
The India-Korea semiconductor agreement is the latest in a series of bilateral semiconductor cooperation frameworks that India has concluded with the United States, Japan, and now South Korea, each of which adds a layer of formality and incentive to the relationships between India and the companies of each country that supply the global semiconductor supply chain. Collectively, these agreements position India as a country that is integrated into the network of trusted semiconductor supply chain geographies that US allies and partners are building as an alternative to the concentration of semiconductor manufacturing in China and Taiwan. For South Korea specifically, the ability to route DRAM packaging through India provides a supply chain diversification option that the US government has informally encouraged Korean memory companies to develop, and the bilateral agreement gives Korean companies the confidence that the Indian operating environment is stable and supported at the government-to-government level.
