The Godfather of South Korea’s Chip Business

They have been referred to as “Kim’s Mafia.” Kim Choong-Ki himself wouldn’t have put it that means. Nevertheless it was true what semiconductor engineers in South Korea whispered about his former college students: They have been in all places.

Beginning within the mid-Eighties, as chip manufacturing within the nation accelerated, engineers who had studied underneath Kim at
Korea Superior Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) assumed prime posts within the {industry} in addition to coveted positions instructing or researching semiconductors at universities and authorities institutes. By the start of the twenty first century, South Korea had grow to be a dominant energy within the world semiconductor market, assembly greater than 60 p.c of worldwide demand for reminiscence chips alone. World wide, lots of Kim’s protégés have been lauded for his or her good success in remodeling the financial system of a nation that had simply began assembling radio units in 1959 and was fabricating outdated reminiscence chips within the early ’80s.

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That success could be traced partially to Kim, now an emeritus professor at KAIST. Of common peak, with grey hair since his mid-30s, he was the primary professor in South Korea to systematically educate semiconductor engineering. From 1975, when the nation had barely begun producing its first transistors, to 2008, when he retired from instructing, Kim skilled greater than 100 college students, successfully creating the primary two generations of South Korean semiconductor consultants.

Kim and his former college students and their households have a good time his sixtieth birthday on the summit of South Korea’s Mount Deokyu.Chang Hae-Ja

The Samsung Welfare Basis acknowledged Kim’s affect when it
awarded him its prestigious Ho-Am Prize in 1993 for “constructing a stable basis for Korea’s semiconductor {industry}.” Since then, he has been revered within the South Korean media because the {industry}’s “godfather.” But even at this time, Kim stays largely unknown outdoors of South Korea’s chip neighborhood. Who, then, is that this inconspicuous semiconductor “Mafia” boss?

A Begin in Digicam Chips

Kim Choong-Ki was born in Seoul in 1942, when Korea was a colony of the Japanese Empire. His mom taught elementary college; his father, Kim Byung-Woon, was a textile engineer for
Kyungbang, Korea’s iconic producer of yarns and materials. The elder Kim had helped construct the corporate’s first spinning manufacturing facility, and his engineering savvy and consequent renown impressed his son. “He made a each day tour of the manufacturing facility,” the youthful Kim recollects. “He advised me that he may detect which machines have been in bother and why, simply by listening to them.” Such classes planted the seed of an ethos that may drive Kim Choong-Ki’s profession—what he got here to name the “engineer’s thoughts.”

Rising up, Kim Choong-Ki was a mannequin South Korean scholar: bookish, obedient, and silent. Though his household pressed him to affix his father within the textile {industry}, he as an alternative selected to pursue electrical engineering. He studied at Seoul Nationwide College after which at Columbia College, in New York Metropolis, the place he earned his doctorate underneath
Edward S. Yang, a specialist in transistor principle. Shortly after, in the summertime of 1970, Fairchild Camera and Instrument employed Kim to work in its analysis and growth laboratory in Palo Alto, Calif.

Kim, proven on the Columbia campus, studied for his Ph.D. on the college underneath Edward S. Yang, a specialist in transistor principle. Chang Hae-Ja

Kim’s mom and father, a famend Korean textile engineer, go to him in Palo Alto, Calif., in 1971.Chang Hae-Ja

Since World Warfare II, Fairchild Digicam had been the world’s leading developer of imaging tools, together with radar cameras, radio compasses, and X-ray machines. In 1957, the corporate launched the division Fairchild Semiconductor to manufacture transistors and built-in circuits from silicon, then an revolutionary transfer, as most semiconductor units on the time used germanium. The enterprise spawned dozens of merchandise, together with the primary silicon built-in circuit, thus fueling the rise of Silicon Valley. As a newcomer to Fairchild’s R&D lab, Kim was put to work on considered one of these new sorts of chips: the charge-coupled machine.

Simply the yr earlier than, in 1969, George E. Smith and Willard Boyle at Bell Laboratories
proposed the concept of the CCD, for which they might later win a Nobel Prize. Nevertheless it was Kim and his colleagues at Fairchild who realized the primary CCD units that developed into business merchandise extensively utilized in digital pictures, radiography, and astronomy. Kim turned so proficient in CCD know-how that different engineers on the firm frequently dropped by his workplace on the finish of the day to choose his mind. “Quickly they started to name me Professor CCD,” he remembers.

Kim’s colleagues at Fairchild Semiconductor’s analysis and growth laboratories referred to as him “Professor CCD.”Chang Hae-Ja

Amongst different innovations, Kim helped develop a
CCD space picture sensor that vastly improved low-light detection and the primary two-phase CCD linear picture sensor—which, he reported, assured “the convenience of use and the prime quality of picture replica.” “Fairchild’s—or higher name them Choong-Ki’s—CCDs made possible the wide applications in high-resolution cameras,” Columbia’s Yang says. With out these practical units, he provides, “there can be no Nobel Prize for the CCD.”

Kim’s time at Fairchild remodeled him as a lot because it did digicam know-how. His education in South Korea and at Columbia had primarily emphasised book studying and principle. However his expertise at Fairchild solidified his perception, first impressed by his father, {that a} true “engineer’s thoughts” requires sensible talent as a lot as theoretical information. Along with performing experiments, he made a behavior of studying inner technical experiences and memos that he discovered on the firm library, a few of which he later dropped at KAIST and used as instructing materials.

At Fairchild, Kim additionally realized the best way to talk with and lead different engineers. When he began there, he was soft-spoken and introverted, however his mentors at Fairchild inspired him to precise himself confidently and clearly. Later, the transformed Kim would grow to be the “loudest-speaking” professor at KAIST, in line with a number of fellow college members, they usually say his absence made the entire campus appear quiet.

Kim rose rapidly inside Fairchild’s hierarchy. However simply 5 years into his tenure, he returned to South Korea. His beloved father had died, and, because the eldest son, he felt a heavy accountability to take care of his widowed mom. Racial discrimination he skilled at Fairchild had additionally harm his satisfaction. Most necessary, nevertheless, he had discovered a super place to work back home.

Then referred to as KAIS (the “T” was added in 1981), Kim’s new employer was the primary science and know-how college in South Korea and stays some of the prestigious. The South Korean authorities had established the institute in 1971 with financing from the US Company for Worldwide Improvement and had invited
Frederick E. Terman, the legendary dean of Stanford College’s college of engineering and a “father” of Silicon Valley, to attract up the blueprint for its path. Terman confused that KAIS ought to purpose to “fulfill the wants of Korean {industry} and Korean industrial institutions for extremely skilled and revolutionary specialists, moderately than so as to add to the world’s retailer of fundamental information.” It was the right place for Kim to unfold his newfound philosophy of the “engineer’s thoughts.”

South Korea’s Founding Lab

Kim’s laboratory at KAIS attracted scores of bold grasp’s and doctoral candidates from nearly the second he arrived within the spring of 1975. The first purpose for the lab’s reputation was apparent: South Korean college students have been hungry to find out about semiconductors. The federal government touted the significance of those units, as did electronics firms like GoldStar and Samsung, which wanted them to fabricate their radios, televisions, microwaves, and watches. However the {industry} had but to mass-produce its personal chips past fundamental built-in circuits corresponding to CMOS watch chips, largely as a result of a scarcity of semiconductor specialists. For 20 years, till the mid-Nineties, becoming a member of Kim’s lab was primarily the one means for aspiring semiconductor engineers in South Korea to get hands-on coaching; KAIS was the one college within the nation that had in a position lecturers and correct services, together with clear rooms for assembling high-quality chips.

Nevertheless it wasn’t KAIST’s digital monopoly on semiconductor coaching that made Kim a mentor with out peer. He launched a mode of instructing and of mastering engineering that was new to South Korea. As an example, his conviction that an “engineer’s thoughts” requires equal components principle and utility at first puzzled his college students, who regarded engineering as mainly a scholarly self-discipline. Though they have been proficient in arithmetic and nicely learn, most of them had by no means carried out any severe work in design and building.

Due to this fact, one of many first classes Kim taught his college students was the best way to use their palms. Earlier than they launched into their very own tasks, he put them to work cleansing the lab, repairing and upgrading tools, and monitoring down vital components. On this means, they realized the best way to clear up issues for themselves and the best way to improvise in conditions for which no textbook had ready them. Their view of what it means to be an engineer modified profoundly and completely. Lots of them confess they nonetheless repeat Kim’s dicta to this present day. For instance: “Don’t select the themes that others have already thrown into the trash can.” And: “Scientists take into account
why first, however we engineers should suppose how first.” And: “Unsuitable resolution is best than sluggish resolution.”

Kim’s former college students bear in mind him as variety, humorous, nonauthoritarian, meticulous, and hardworking. However in addition they say he was strict and might be scorching tempered and even terrifying, particularly when he thought they have been being lazy or sloppy. Legend has it that a few of his students entered the lab via a ladder from the rooftop to bypass Kim’s office. One in every of his largest grievances was when college students didn’t correctly steadiness principle and observe. “Make it your self; then we are going to begin a dialogue,” he scolded those that centered an excessive amount of on mental examine. Then again, he stated, “Why don’t you employ one thing malleable throughout the onerous nut in your neck?” as a reproach to those that spent an excessive amount of time constructing issues, implying that they need to additionally use their brains.

Kim influenced not solely his personal college students but additionally numerous others via his openness. He cooperated with and even shared laboratory house with different KAIST professors, and he appreciated to go to different departments and universities to offer seminars or just to achieve new concepts and views—conduct that was, and nonetheless is, very uncommon in South Korean educational tradition. In his autobiography,
Chin Dae-Je, who developed 16-megabit DRAM at Samsung in 1989 and later served as South Korea’s minister of data and know-how, recounts in search of out Kim’s tutelage when Chin was a graduate scholar at Seoul Nationwide College within the mid-Seventies. “There was an intense spirit of competitors” between SNU and KAIST, recollects Chin, whose alma matter labeled him a “drawback scholar” for learning with a rival professor.

Kim’s collegiality prolonged past academia to {industry} and authorities . Within the early Eighties, throughout a sabbatical, he led semiconductor analysis and growth on the government-funded
Korea Institute of Electronics Expertise, which developed each 32-kilobit and 64-kilobit ROM underneath his directorship. His standard semiconductor workshops at KAIST impressed GoldStar (LG since 1995), Hyundai Electronics (Hynix since 2001), and Samsung to sponsor their very own coaching packages at KAIST within the Nineties. Kim’s shut partnership with these firms additionally helped launch different pioneering mostly-industry-funded initiatives at KAIST, together with the Heart for Excessive-Efficiency Built-in Techniques and the Built-in-Circuit Design Training Heart, each directed by Kim’s former scholar Kyung Chong-Min. And the semiconductor {industry}, in flip, benefited from the ever extra extremely skilled workforce rising from Kim’s orbit.

Kim [front row, orange tie] additionally served as director of Korea’s Heart for Electro-Optics, a authorities analysis institute fashioned to develop applied sciences for thermal imaging, fiber optics, and lasers.Chang Hae-Ja

The Evolution of South Korea’s Semiconductor Business

Chung Jin-Yong [right], a former scholar of Kim [left], developed DRAM for Hynix after graduating from KAIST in 1976.Chang Hae-Ja

Kim’s lab at KAIST developed in parallel with the expansion of the semiconductor sector in South Korea, which could be divided into three intervals. In the course of the first interval, starting within the mid-Sixties, the federal government led the cost by enacting legal guidelines and drawing up plans for {industry} growth, establishing analysis institutes, and urgent firms and universities to pay extra consideration to semiconductor know-how. Samsung and different electronics firms wouldn’t get severe about manufacturing semiconductor units till the early Eighties. So when Kim began his lab, nearly a decade prior, he was coaching engineers to satisfy the {industry}’s
future wants.

His first group of scholars labored totally on the design and fabrication of semiconductors utilizing PMOS, NMOS, and CMOS applied sciences that, whereas not innovative by world requirements, have been fairly superior for the South Korea of the time. As a result of there have been few {industry} jobs, many alumni of Kim’s lab took positions at authorities analysis institutes, the place they developed state-of-the-art experimental chips. An exception was Lim Hyung-Kyu, considered one of Kim’s first grasp’s candidates, whom Samsung despatched to check at KAIST in 1976. Lim would go on to steer the event of varied reminiscence units at Samsung, most significantly NAND flash reminiscence within the Nineties.

The second interval began in 1983, when Samsung declared that it might pursue semiconductors aggressively, beginning with DRAM. The transfer drove rival conglomerates corresponding to Hyundai and GoldStar to do likewise. Consequently, the South Korean chip {industry} quickly expanded. KAIST and different universities offered the required manpower, and the federal government decreased its function. In Kim’s lab, college students started to discover rising applied sciences—together with polysilicon thin-film transistors (for LCD panels), infrared sensors (for army use), and speedy thermal processing (which elevated effectivity and reduced costs of semiconductor manufacturing)—and revealed their leads to prestigious worldwide journals.

KAIST engineering professors Kim [center, gray robe] and Kwon Younger-Se [right, blue hood] pose with grasp’s graduates in 1982. Chang Hae-Ja

Kim’s former grasp’s scholar, Kwon Oh-Hyun, rose to grow to be vice chairman and CEO of Samsung Electronics. Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Pictures

KAIST graduates flocked to Samsung, GoldStar/LG, and Hyundai/Hynix. As authorities affect declined, some alums from the primary interval who had labored at authorities analysis institutes additionally took company jobs. On the identical time, an increasing number of of Kim’s former college students accepted college professorships. After leaving Kim’s lab in 1991, as an illustration, Cho Byung-Jin spent 4 years developing DRAM and flash memory at Hyundai before becoming a star professor at the National University of Singapore and later at KAIST. Kyung Chong-Min, Kim’s first doctoral candidate, joined KAIST’s college in 1983; by the point he retired in 2018, Kyung had skilled extra semiconductor specialists than Kim himself.

In the course of the third interval, from 2000 on, {industry} seized the helm of semiconductor growth. Academia churned out extra specialists in addition to vital analysis, with minimal contribution from authorities. Alumni of Kim’s lab continued to steer semiconductor engineering, a few of them rising to grow to be high-ranking executives. For instance,
Kwon Oh-Hyun, who obtained his grasp’s diploma from KAIST in 1977, served as CEO at Samsung Electronics for many of the 2010s, when the corporate dominated the world market in not solely reminiscence but additionally cellphones, TVs, and residential home equipment.

Different alums played key roles in semiconductor analysis and growth. Ha Yong-Min at LG Show mastered TFT-LCD and OLED screens for tablets, pocket book computer systems, and cellphones; Park Sung-Kye, typically referred to as the “treasure of Hynix,” developed many of the firm’s reminiscence merchandise. In academia, in the meantime, Kim had grow to be a mannequin to emulate. Lots of his trainees adopted his strategies and ideas in instructing and mentoring their very own college students to grow to be leaders within the discipline, making certain a gradual provide of extremely expert semiconductor engineers for generations to return.

Within the spring of 2007, lower than a yr earlier than Kim turned 65—the obligatory retirement age in South Korean academia—KAIST elected him as considered one of its first distinguished professors, thus extending his tenure for all times. Moreover the Ho-Am Prize, he has garnered quite a few different awards through the years, together with the Order of Civil Benefit for “excellent meritorious companies…within the curiosity of enhancing residents’ welfare and selling nationwide growth.” And in 2019, he was named a Particular person of Distinguished Service to Science and Expertise, one of many nation’s highest honors.

Legend and Legacy

For younger semiconductor engineers in South Korea at this time, Kim Choong-Ki is a legend—the nice unsung hero behind their nation’s ascendancy in chip manufacturing. However its dominance on the planet market is now underneath risk. Though South Korea has competed furiously with Taiwan in current many years, its most formidable challenger sooner or later will probably be China, whose bold
Made in China 2025 plan prioritizes semiconductor growth. Since 2000, the nation has been a significant importer of South Korean chips. However China’s current heavy funding in semiconductors and the supply of extremely educated Chinese language engineers—together with semiconductor specialists skilled in the US, Japan, and South Korea—implies that Chinese language semiconductor firms may quickly grow to be main world rivals.

Compounding the issue, the South Korean authorities has uncared for its function in supporting chip growth within the twenty first century. Practically 50 years after Kim started educating its first semiconductor engineers, the {industry} once more faces a major workforce scarcity. Specialists estimate that
a number of thousand new engineering specialists are wanted every year, however the nation produces only some hundred. But regardless of firms’ pleas for extra employees and universities’ requires policies that advance educational training and analysis, the federal government has performed little.

Towards the top of his profession, Kim had grow to be involved with the restrictions of the form of “engineer’s thoughts” that had taken root in South Korea. “The financial growth of Korea was depending on reverse engineering and following superior international locations,” he stated in an interview in 1997. That fast-follower strategy, he added, relied on an academic system that taught college students “the best way to learn maps”—to determine a identified product purpose and plot a course for reaching it. “And who made the maps? Superior international locations.” He thus concluded, “We now have to alter our instructional coverage and educate our college students how to attract maps.”

Kim himself might not have totally realized this bold imaginative and prescient of cultivating a rustic of creative-minded engineers, able to pioneering really groundbreaking applied sciences that may secure his nation’s management on the world stage. However hopefully his successors have taken his recommendation to coronary heart. The way forward for South Korea depends upon it.

To learn extra, see “Switch of ‘Engineer’s Thoughts’: Kim Choong-Ki and the Semiconductor Business in South Korea,” Engineering Research 11:2 (2019), 83-108.