Brain Drain to China
According to industry sources, the Ministry of Trade, Industry & Energy is currently having talks with Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix in order to deal with the brain drain of semiconductor engineers to Chinese companies.
In this context, the ministry is mulling over setting up semiconductor research and training institutes to attract experts willing to move to Chinese manufacturers.
These days, 200 to 300 semiconductor engineers retire from Samsung Electronics a year. The number is rather insignificant given that a total of 45,000 and 21,500 or so semiconductor experts are currently working for Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix, respectively.
Still, most of the retirees are highly-skilled persons and high-rank managers, and their transfer to Chinese companies could result in problems with regard to the business of the Korean semiconductor manufacturers. Although there is no official data yet, it is said that the brain drain is in rapid progress.
The outflow of personnel is occurring in the smart phone industry, too. China has been snatching Korean smart phone designers as well as semiconductor engineers in the sector, examples including Kim Joon-seo from Samsung Electronics. He moved to Huawei in 2012 and has been in charge of product design there since then, coming up with P8, Nexus 6 and many more. The other Chinese smart phone manufacturers such as Meizu, ZTE and Xiaomi are looking to hire Korean experts as well.