Making a Semiconductor Superpower

This book provides real stories about the South Korean semiconductor community. It explores the lives and careers of six influential semiconductor engineers who all studied at Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) under the mentorship of Dr. Kim Choong-Ki, the most influential semiconductor professor in South Korea during the last quarter of the twentieth century. Kim’s students became known as “Kim’s Mafia” because of the important positions they went on to hold in industry, government, and academia. This book will be of interest to semiconductor engineers and electronics engineers, historians of science and technology, and scholars and students of East Asian studies.

“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. … Kim was the first professor in South Korea to systematically teach semiconductor 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.” (Source: IEEE Spectrum, October, 2022.)