South Korea’s semiconductor industry did even better. After dethroning Japan’s DRAM producers and becoming the world’s leading memory chipmaker in 1992, Samsung grew rapidly through the rest of that decade. It fended off competition in the DRAM market from Taiwan and Singapore, benefitting from formal government support and from unofficial government pressure on South Korea’s banks to provide credit. This financing mattered because Samsung’s main product, DRAM memory chips, required brute financial force to reach each successive technology node—spending that had to be sustained even during
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