South Korea on Monday laid out a sweeping industrial strategy centred on semiconductors and artificial intelligence, as President Lee Jae Myung unveiled over $576 billion in chip investment to secure global dominance and rebalance growth. The plan, anchored by Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix, marks Lee's boldest push yet to align South Korea's AI and chip ambitions with his pledge to narrow regional disparities and revive economies beyond the Seoul metropolitan area. Flanked by the chiefs of the world's two biggest memory chipmakers, Lee cast the initiative as a "great leap forward," centred on the "triple axis" of semiconductors, physical AI and data centres. "We must secure the core elements of AI faster than any other country," the president said in a televised address.