The Remarkable Achievements and Challenges of Samsung, SK, and Hyundai Motor

The results speak for themselves. In the first quarter of this year, Samsung Electronics and SK hynix each posted their best performance since founding, while Hyundai Motor recorded its highest-ever first-quarter sales and increased its global market share despite a clear slowdown in worldwide automobile demand.

Samsung Electronics’ strength came from bold investment decisions. As exploding demand for AI semiconductors sharply divided the fortunes of global chipmakers, Samsung was one of the companies that poured tens of trillions of won into facilities even when others were cutting back on investment.

Challenges remain, including restoring competitiveness in HBM and competing in next-generation processes. What matters, however, is that this performance came not from government directives, but from the company’s own judgment and capital investment.

SK hynix’s leap forward shows what preemptive investment can achieve. As big tech companies pour astronomical sums into AI infrastructure, SK hynix has secured a central position in the supply chain for HBM, a key component.

It is the product of entrepreneurial decisions that read market changes early and pushed ahead with large-scale facility investment. Risks such as customer concentration and cycle volatility have not disappeared, but the fact that a Korean company holds a key position in the AI-era supply chain is highly significant in itself.

Hyundai Motor’s performance has once again confirmed the potential of manufacturing. While global competitors fell into negative growth, Hyundai Motor instead expanded its presence by increasing its market share in the U.S. market.

Its strategy of responding flexibly during the electric vehicle slowdown with high-value-added models such as hybrids proved effective. Tariff burdens and the shift toward software-centered vehicles remain challenges, but expanding its position in the midst of crisis is the product of entrepreneurship.

The three companies’ achievements share one thing in common. Each made its own decisions, invested on its own, and bore responsibility on its own. The government never told them where to invest, nor did it order them to develop any particular technology.

These results were possible because companies were free to allocate capital and take risks. In the end, corporate performance emerges when the freedom to do business is guaranteed.

Competition does not wait. No matter how great the achievement, it does not automatically guarantee the future. AI semiconductors are a battlefield where technological gaps are contested every quarter, and the automobile industry is undergoing a period of upheaval in which tariffs and supply chain reorganization are unfolding at the same time.

What companies must do is clear: develop technology, execute investment, and win in the market. But what actually holds them back lies outside the company.

Investment does not stay put. Corporate investment moves to places where regulation is lighter, permits and approvals are faster, and the tax system is predictable.

In an era when countries around the world are competing to attract corporate investment, what keeps companies in place is not words but the business environment. If Korea is not to fall behind in that competition, it must become a country where companies want to invest.

When institutions hold companies back, performance stops as well. If a rigid labor market, controversy over revisions to the Commercial Act, Seoul metropolitan area and location regulations, insufficient power infrastructure, and slow environmental permitting continue to accumulate, even strong companies will have no choice but to delay investment.

Anti-business sentiment toward large corporations and punitive regulation weaken the competitiveness of the entire Korean economy. Foreign rivals are not the only ones shaking companies. Domestic views that treat companies as objects of control may be even more dangerous.

Freedom is the answer. Companies are the agents that create growth, jobs, and tax revenue. What Samsung, SK, and Hyundai Motor have shown is what is possible when companies are free to invest and compete. To sustain these achievements, we should not bind companies more tightly, but expand their freedom to invest, their freedom to hire, and their freedom to compete in global markets.

What the Korean economy needs is autonomy rather than interference, flexible institutions rather than rigidity, and a competitive tax system rather than heavier burdens. Creating an environment where companies can run freely—that is the industrial policy the state should pursue. The Korean economy’s next leap forward will come not from regulation, but from freedom.

---

Original title: 삼성·SK·현대차의 놀라운 성과와 숙제

Author: Sung-no Choi

Date: 2026-05-19

Source: https://www.cfe.org/bbs/bbsDetail.php?cid=press&pn=1&idx=28935