The Godfather of South Korea's Chip Industry: Kim Choong-Ki's “Engineer's Mind” Helped Make the Country a Semiconductor Superpower

They were called “Kim's Mafia.” Kim Choong-Ki himself wouldn't have put it that way. But it was true what semiconductor engineers in South Korea whispered about his former students: They were everywhere. • Starting in the mid-1980s, as chip manufacturing in the country accelerated, engineers who had studied under Kim at Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) assumed top posts in the industry as well as coveted positions teaching or researching semiconductors at universities and government institutes. By the beginning of the 21st century, South Korea had become a dominant power in the global semiconductor market, meeting more than 60 percent of international demand for memory chips alone. Around the world, many of Kim's protégés were lauded for their brilliant success in transforming the economy of a nation that had just started assembling radio sets in 1959 and was fabricating outdated memory chips in the early '80s.• That success can be traced in part to Kim, now an emeritus professor at KAIST. Of average height, with gray hair since his mid-30s, he was the first professor in South Korea to systematically teach semi-conductor engineering. From 1975, when the nation had barely begun producing its first transistors, to 2008, when he retired from teaching, Kim trained more than 100 students, effectively creating the first two generations of South Korean semiconductor experts.