At the end of summer in 2022, when I was pulling myself out of the Washington, DC policy circles after the passing of the CHIPS & Science Act and the Inflation Reduction Act in the U.S., I was invited to contribute to a joint conference on US.-ROK Science and Tech Partnership on Critical Technologies in November 2022 in Honolulu (with a preceding online conference in September 2022), organized by the Pacific Forum and George Mason University Korea.

I had held the inaugural Korea Foundation fellowship (non-residential) in 2014-2015, and another James A. Kelly fellowship (non-residential) in 2017-19 at the Pacific Forum, and had participated in Pacific Forum conferences while I served as a postdoctoral fellow in Singapore.

I had also held lectureship in Government at George Mason University in Korea in 2019, so collaborating with the two entities was not foreign to me. Mark Manantan of Pacific Forum and Soyoung Kwon of George Mason University Korea played an instrumental role in directing and operationalizing the project.

This report, edited by Mark Manantan of the Pacific Forum and Soyoung Kwon of George Mason University Korea is an outcome of the Pacific Forum Conference on U.S.-ROK Cooperation in Technology held in Honolulu, HI USA November 8-12, 2022. We had a lengthy and heated debate at the conference in Honolulu, on current policies surrounding semiconductors (at the time, the CHIPS & Science Act conditions for subsidies were not available and were reflected after they were announced into the analysis) and geopolitics.

My contribution to the report is on semiconductors. Please click on the cover above to read.

June Park. ‘Industrial Policy and Uncertainties in US-ROK Cooperation in Semiconductors: The U.S. Chips & Science Act Subsidy Conditions and Guardrails,’ in Mark Manantan and Soyoung Kwon eds., ‘US-ROK Science and Tech Partnership on Critical Technologies,’ Pacific Forum & George Mason University Korea. July 25, 2023.