[EDITORIALS]Triumph in technology

Samsung Electronics has another reason to be proud. Its 60-nanometer, 8-gigabit NAND flash memory chip is the first of its kind in the world, and its 80-nanometer, 2-gigabit DDR2 DRAM chip boasts the largest capacity ever developed in semiconductor chips. The company has proven itself again as a top global player in semiconductor technology.
Until now, such chips were thought impossible to make. The technology used to make them involves 60-nanometer technology, about one two-thousandth the thickness of a human hair. A memory card made with this technology can store information amounting to 1.02 million newspaper pages, or 4,000 music files. This is truly revolutionary.
Samsung has widened the gap between itself and its foreign competitors, and will now lead the next-generation semiconductor market. Amid the bleak domestic economy, this is good news. This will provide a new growth force for almost all digital sectors, such as mobile communications, computers, cellular phones and digital music players.
This success gives us hope that Korea can become a world leader through technology. Though Samsung began making semiconductors 20 years later than its competitors, it now has 30 percent of the global market. The company has broken Moore’s Law, which states that semiconductor capacity doubles every 18 months; since 1999, it has doubled its transistors’ capacity every 12 months. This achievement has even been given the nickname “Hwang’s Law,” referring to the company’s president, Hwang Chang-gyu.
Last year alone, Samsung made net profits of 6 trillion won ($5.2 billion), playing the role of a locomotive in the Korean economy. In other countries, even those people who do not know Korea nod when asked if they know about Samsung.
The Korean economy is facing a terribly serious crisis. Through the success of Samsung, the economy can seek momentum and use this incident as a springboard. The reasons for Samsung’s success lie in the keen insight of its leaders, its bold investments in personnel and technology and consistent management strategies. Other companies should benchmark these merits. The government should also create the environment for companies that have technological abilities to become the second or third Samsung Electronics.