South Korean AI Hardware Suppliers Seen Outpacing Memory Giants on Supply Breadth

South Korea's artificial intelligence hardware component manufacturers will likely deliver stronger returns than the country's dominant memory chip makers when the market stabilizes, according to Lee Wang-seop, head of equity investment at Hana Asset Management, which oversees $558 million in assets. The fund manager's outlook reflects a strategic reallocation underway across the region's semiconductor ecosystem, driven by mounting bottlenecks in packaging substrates and multilayer ceramic capacitors (MLCCs) that are proving more constraining than raw chip output.