Their Semiconductor's and Memory division is Samsung's cash cow [0]. All their consumer electronics divisions are basically attempts at cashing into adjacent sectors (eg. Samsung started making chips and displays for cellphone makers like Nokia and Sony since the 1990s, so they pivoted into the smartphone world in the 2000s)
That said, not surprised by the semiconductor revenue decrease due to the trade war that happened between Korea and Japan [1] due to very acrimonious elections in SK in 2019 along with South Korea's de facto trade war with China [2] in the aftermath of the THAAD rollout (that's also why Vietnam is growing so fast - almost all Korean companies pivoted to Vietnam overnight after negotiating a very one sided free trade deal and moved operations literally overnight). Procurement lags by a couple years so the downward hit only began around 2023 from the looks of it.
Most of the revenue tanking comes from decreased demand from Chinese markets.
Japan-Korea trade war was mostly for show and added an extra theoretical risk and bureaucracy but in actuality all the Japanese chip supply companies would have gone bankrupt had they enforced it, considering there are only two companies, TSMC and Samsung that buy supplies they sell, and TSMC wouldn't be able to magically take up Samsung's capacity. US would have been forced to keep Japanese companies supplying Samsung otherwise their high tech sectors would be in shambles / increased geopolitical risk of TSMC being sole supplier of higher end chips.
Samsung increased domestic and Chinese supply proportions in their supply chain and paid a little extra for other supplies they depend on Japanese supply companies since the trade 'sanctions' didn't block Japanese Chip companies from by-passing it via 3rd country rerouting. Some Japanese companies also built factories in Korea to bypass it.
Korea acquiesced mostly because Moon administration over-reached in trying to win brownie points from nationalist left by being "tough" on Japan which put them in a legally vulnerable position with Supreme court's judgement(by installing supreme court judges with clear ideological bend) in direct conflict with 1965 Japan-Korea agreement + increased geopolitical risk atmosphere from China/ Ukraine/Russian war.
> Korea acquiesced mostly because Moon administration over-reached in trying to win brownie points from nationalist left by being "tough" on Japan which put them in a legally vulnerable position with Supreme court's judgement(by installing supreme court judges with clear ideological bend) in direct conflict with 1965 Japan-Korea agreement + increased geopolitical risk atmosphere from China/ Ukraine/Russian war.
Yep. Imo SK looks like it's entering a very turbulent political couple of years due to the DPK-People Power bickering. There has definitely been a fair amount of democratic backsliding due to a weaker civil society
That said, not surprised by the semiconductor revenue decrease due to the trade war that happened between Korea and Japan [1] due to very acrimonious elections in SK in 2019 along with South Korea's de facto trade war with China [2] in the aftermath of the THAAD rollout (that's also why Vietnam is growing so fast - almost all Korean companies pivoted to Vietnam overnight after negotiating a very one sided free trade deal and moved operations literally overnight). Procurement lags by a couple years so the downward hit only began around 2023 from the looks of it.
Probably explains why South Korea acquiesced.
[0] - https://www.statista.com/statistics/630434/samsung-quarterly...
[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japan%E2%80%93South_Korea_trad...
[2] - https://www.brookings.edu/articles/how-south-korea-sees-tech...