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That success could be traced partially to Kim, now an emeritus professor at KAIST. Of common top, with grey hair since his mid-30s, he was the primary professor in South Korea to systematically train semiconductor engineering. From 1975, when the nation had barely begun producing its first transistors, to 2008, when he retired from educating, Kim skilled greater than 100 college students, successfully creating the primary two generations of South Korean semiconductor specialists.

Kim and his former college students and their households rejoice his sixtieth birthday on the summit of South Korea’s Mount Deokyu.Chang Hae-Ja

The Samsung Welfare Basis acknowledged Kim’s affect when it
awarded him its prestigious Ho-Am Prize in 1993 for “constructing a strong basis for Korea’s semiconductor {industry}.” Since then, he has been revered within the South Korean media because the {industry}’s “godfather.” But even right now, Kim stays largely unknown outdoors of South Korea’s chip group. Who, then, is that this inconspicuous semiconductor “Mafia” boss?

A Begin in Digicam Chips

Kim Choong-Ki was born in Seoul in 1942, when Korea was a colony of the Japanese Empire. His mom taught elementary faculty; his father, Kim Byung-Woon, was a textile engineer for
Kyungbang, Korea’s iconic producer of yarns and materials. The elder Kim had helped construct the corporate’s first spinning manufacturing unit, and his engineering savvy and consequent renown impressed his son. “He made a day by day tour of the manufacturing unit,” the youthful Kim recollects. “He informed me that he might detect which machines have been in hassle and why, simply by listening to them.” Such classes planted the seed of an ethos that might drive Kim Choong-Ki’s profession—what he got here to name the “engineer’s thoughts.”

Rising up, Kim Choong-Ki was a mannequin South Korean scholar: bookish, obedient, and silent. Though his household pressed him to affix his father within the textile {industry}, he as an alternative selected to pursue electrical engineering. He studied at Seoul Nationwide College after which at Columbia College, in New York Metropolis, the place he earned his doctorate beneath
Edward S. Yang, a specialist in transistor idea. Shortly after, in the summertime of 1970, Fairchild Digicam and Instrument employed Kim to work in its analysis and growth laboratory in Palo Alto, Calif.

Kim, proven on the Columbia campus, studied for his Ph.D. on the college beneath Edward S. Yang, a specialist in transistor idea. Chang Hae-Ja

Kim’s mom and father, a famend Korean textile engineer, go to him in Palo Alto, Calif., in 1972.Chang Hae-Ja

Since World Conflict II, Fairchild Digicam had been the world’s main developer of imaging gear, together with radar cameras, radio compasses, and X-ray machines. In 1957, the corporate launched the division Fairchild Semiconductor to manufacture transistors and built-in circuits from silicon, then an modern transfer, as most semiconductor units on the time used germanium. The enterprise spawned dozens of merchandise, together with the primary silicon built-in circuit, thus fueling the rise of Silicon Valley. As a newcomer to Fairchild’s R&D lab, Kim was put to work on certainly one of these new sorts of chips: the charge-coupled system.

Simply the yr earlier than, in 1969, George E. Smith and Willard Boyle at Bell Laboratories
proposed the idea of the CCD, for which they’d later win a Nobel Prize. However it was Kim and his colleagues at Fairchild who realized the primary CCD units that advanced into business merchandise broadly utilized in digital pictures, radiography, and astronomy. Kim grew to become so proficient in CCD know-how that different engineers on the firm usually dropped by his workplace on the finish of the day to choose his mind. “Quickly they started to name me Professor CCD,” he remembers.

Kim’s colleagues at Fairchild Semiconductor’s analysis and growth laboratories known as him “Professor CCD.”Chang Hae-Ja

Amongst different innovations, Kim helped develop a
CCD area image sensor that greatly improved low-light detection and the primary two-phase CCD linear image sensor—which, he reported, assured “the benefit of use and the top quality of picture replica.” “Fairchild’s—or higher name them Choong-Ki’s—CCDs made potential the extensive purposes in high-resolution cameras,” Columbia’s Yang says. With out these practical units, he provides, “there could be no Nobel Prize for the CCD.”

Kim’s time at Fairchild remodeled him as a lot because it did digital camera know-how. His education in South Korea and at Columbia had primarily emphasised e book studying and idea. However his expertise at Fairchild solidified his perception, first impressed by his father, {that a} true “engineer’s thoughts” requires sensible ability as a lot as theoretical information. Along with performing experiments, he made a behavior of studying inside technical experiences and memos that he discovered on the firm library, a few of which he later dropped at KAIST and used as educating materials.

At Fairchild, Kim additionally discovered methods to talk with and lead different engineers. When he began there, he was soft-spoken and introverted, however his mentors at Fairchild inspired him to specific himself confidently and clearly. Later, the transformed Kim would change into the “loudest-speaking” professor at KAIST, in response to a number of fellow college members, they usually say his absence made the entire campus appear quiet.

Kim rose rapidly inside Fairchild’s hierarchy. However simply 5 years into his tenure, he returned to South Korea. His beloved father had died, and, because the eldest son, he felt a heavy duty to take care of his widowed mom. Racial discrimination he skilled at Fairchild had additionally harm his satisfaction. Most essential, nevertheless, he had discovered a perfect place to work again house.

Then known as KAIS (the “T” was added in 1981), Kim’s new employer was the primary science and know-how college in South Korea and stays one of the vital prestigious. The South Korean authorities had established the institute in 1971 with financing from america Company for Worldwide Improvement and had invited
Frederick E. Terman, the legendary dean of Stanford College’s faculty of engineering and a “father” of Silicon Valley, to attract up the blueprint for its course. Terman confused that KAIS ought to purpose to “fulfill the wants of Korean {industry} and Korean industrial institutions for extremely skilled and modern specialists, moderately than so as to add to the world’s retailer of primary information.” It was the proper place for Kim to unfold his newfound philosophy of the “engineer’s thoughts.”

South Korea’s Founding Lab

Kim’s laboratory at KAIS attracted scores of bold grasp’s and doctoral candidates from virtually the second he arrived within the spring of 1975. The first motive for the lab’s recognition was apparent: South Korean college students have been hungry to find out about semiconductors. The federal government touted the significance of those units, as did electronics corporations like GoldStar and Samsung, which wanted them to fabricate their radios, televisions, microwaves, and watches. However the {industry} had but to mass-produce its personal chips past primary built-in circuits similar to CMOS watch chips, largely on account of an absence of semiconductor specialists. For 20 years, till the mid-Nineteen Nineties, becoming a member of Kim’s lab was primarily the one manner for aspiring semiconductor engineers in South Korea to get hands-on coaching; KAIS was the one college within the nation that had in a position academics and correct amenities, together with clear rooms for assembling high-quality chips.

However it wasn’t KAIST’s digital monopoly on semiconductor coaching that made Kim a mentor with out peer. He launched a method of educating and of mastering engineering that was new to South Korea. As an example, his conviction that an “engineer’s thoughts” requires equal elements idea and software at first puzzled his college students, who regarded engineering as mainly a scholarly self-discipline. Though they have been proficient in arithmetic and effectively learn, most of them had by no means carried out any severe work in design and building.

Due to this fact, one of many first classes Kim taught his college students was methods to use their palms. Earlier than they launched into their very own tasks, he put them to work cleansing the lab, repairing and upgrading gear, and monitoring down obligatory elements. On this manner, they discovered methods to resolve issues for themselves and methods to improvise in conditions for which no textbook had ready them. Their view of what it means to be an engineer modified profoundly and completely. A lot of them confess they nonetheless repeat Kim’s dicta to this present day. For instance: “Don’t select the themes that others have already thrown into the trash can.” And: “Scientists take into account
why first, however we engineers should assume how first.” And: “Mistaken determination is best than sluggish determination.”

Kim’s former college students bear in mind him as form, humorous, nonauthoritarian, meticulous, and hardworking. However additionally they say he was strict and might be sizzling tempered and even terrifying, particularly when he thought they have been being lazy or sloppy. Legend has it that a few of his college students entered the lab by way of a ladder from the rooftop to bypass Kim’s workplace. One in every of his largest grievances was when college students did not correctly stability idea and apply. “Make it your self; then we’ll begin a dialogue,” he scolded those that targeted an excessive amount of on mental examine. Alternatively, he stated, “Why don’t you employ one thing malleable inside the arduous nut in your neck?” as a reproach to those that spent an excessive amount of time constructing issues, implying that they need to additionally use their brains.

Kim influenced not solely his personal college students but in addition numerous others via his openness. He cooperated with and even shared laboratory house with different KAIST professors, and he favored to go to different departments and universities to provide seminars or just to achieve new concepts and views—habits that was, and nonetheless is, very uncommon in South Korean educational tradition. In his autobiography,
Chin Dae-Je, who developed 16-megabit DRAM at Samsung in 1989 and later served as South Korea’s minister of data and know-how, recounts in search of out Kim’s tutelage when Chin was a graduate scholar at Seoul Nationwide College within the mid-Nineteen Seventies. “There was an intense spirit of competitors” between SNU and KAIST, recollects Chin, whose alma matter labeled him a “drawback scholar” for finding out with a rival professor.

Kim’s collegiality prolonged past academia to {industry} and authorities . Within the early Eighties, throughout a sabbatical, he led semiconductor analysis and growth on the government-funded
Korea Institute of Electronics Technology, which developed each 32-kilobit and 64-kilobit ROM beneath his directorship. His fashionable semiconductor workshops at KAIST impressed GoldStar (LG since 1995), Hyundai Electronics (Hynix since 2001), and Samsung to sponsor their very own coaching applications at KAIST within the Nineteen Nineties. Kim’s shut partnership with these corporations additionally helped launch different pioneering mostly-industry-funded initiatives at KAIST, together with the Middle for Excessive-Efficiency Built-in Methods and the Integrated-Circuit Design Education Center, each directed by Kim’s former scholar Kyung Chong-Min. And the semiconductor {industry}, in flip, benefited from the ever extra extremely skilled workforce rising from Kim’s orbit.

Kim [front row, orange tie] additionally served as director of Korea’s Middle for Electro-Optics, a government-sponsored analysis institute shaped to develop applied sciences for thermal imaging, fiber optics, and lasers.Chang Hae-Ja

The Evolution of South Korea’s Semiconductor Business

Chung Jin-Yong [right], a former scholar of Kim [left], graduated from KAIST in 1976 and later developed DRAM for Hynix.Chang Hae-Ja

Kim’s lab at KAIST advanced in parallel with the expansion of the semiconductor sector in South Korea, which could be divided into three intervals. Throughout the first interval, starting within the mid-Sixties, the federal government led the cost by enacting legal guidelines and drawing up plans for {industry} growth, establishing analysis institutes, and urgent corporations and universities to pay extra consideration to semiconductor know-how. Samsung and different electronics corporations wouldn’t get severe about manufacturing semiconductor units till the early Eighties. So when Kim began his lab, virtually a decade prior, he was coaching engineers to satisfy the {industry}’s
future wants.

His first group of scholars labored totally on the design and fabrication of semiconductors utilizing PMOS, NMOS, and CMOS applied sciences that, whereas not innovative by world requirements, have been fairly superior for the South Korea of the time. As a result of there have been few {industry} jobs, many alumni of Kim’s lab took positions at authorities analysis institutes, the place they developed state-of-the-art experimental chips. An exception was Lim Hyung-Kyu, certainly one of Kim’s first grasp’s candidates, whom Samsung despatched to check at KAIST in 1976. Lim would go on to guide the event of varied reminiscence units at Samsung, most significantly NAND flash reminiscence within the Nineteen Nineties.

The second interval began in 1983, when Samsung declared that it could pursue semiconductors aggressively, beginning with DRAM. The transfer drove rival conglomerates similar to Hyundai and GoldStar to do likewise. Because of this, the South Korean chip {industry} quickly expanded. KAIST and different universities supplied the mandatory manpower, and the federal government decreased its function. In Kim’s lab, college students started to discover rising applied sciences—together with polysilicon thin-film transistors (for LCD panels), infrared sensors (for navy use), and speedy thermal processing (which elevated effectivity and decreased prices of semiconductor manufacturing)—and revealed their leads to prestigious worldwide journals.

KAIST engineering professors Kim [center, gray robe] and Kwon Younger-Se [right, blue hood] pose with grasp’s graduates in 1982. Chang Hae-Ja

Kim’s former grasp’s scholar, Kwon Oh-Hyun, rose to change into vice chairman and CEO of Samsung Electronics. Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Pictures

KAIST graduates flocked to Samsung, GoldStar/LG, and Hyundai/Hynix. As authorities affect declined, some alums from the primary interval who had labored at authorities analysis institutes additionally took company jobs. On the similar time, increasingly of Kim’s former college students accepted college professorships. After leaving Kim’s lab in 1991, as an example, Cho Byung-Jin spent 4 years creating DRAM and flash reminiscence at Hyundai earlier than turning into a star professor on the Nationwide College of Singapore and later at KAIST. Kyung Chong-Min, Kim’s first doctoral candidate, joined KAIST’s college in 1983; by the point he retired in 2018, Kyung had skilled extra semiconductor specialists than Kim himself.

Throughout the third interval, from 2000 on, {industry} seized the helm of semiconductor growth. Academia churned out extra specialists in addition to vital analysis, with minimal contribution from authorities. Alumni of Kim’s lab continued to guide semiconductor engineering, a few of them rising to change into high-ranking executives. For instance,
Kwon Oh-Hyun, who acquired his grasp’s diploma from KAIST in 1977, served as CEO at Samsung Electronics for a lot of the 2010s, when the corporate dominated the world market in not solely reminiscence but in addition cell phones, TVs, and residential home equipment.

Different alums performed key roles in semiconductor analysis and growth. Ha Yong-Min at LG Show mastered TFT-LCD and OLED screens for tablets, pocket book computer systems, and cellphones; Park Sung-Kye, typically known as the “treasure of Hynix,” developed a lot of the firm’s reminiscence merchandise. In academia, in the meantime, Kim had change into a mannequin to emulate. A lot of his trainees adopted his strategies and ideas in educating and mentoring their very own college students to change into leaders within the discipline, making certain a gentle provide of extremely expert semiconductor engineers for generations to come back.

Within the spring of 2007, lower than a yr earlier than Kim turned 65—the obligatory retirement age in South Korean academia—KAIST elected him as certainly one of its first distinguished professors, thus extending his tenure for all times. Apart from the Ho-Am Prize, he has garnered quite a few different awards over time, together with the Order of Civil Advantage for “excellent meritorious companies…within the curiosity of enhancing residents’ welfare and selling nationwide growth.” And in 2019, he was named a Individual of Distinguished Service to Science and Know-how, one of many nation’s highest honors.

Legend and Legacy

For younger semiconductor engineers in South Korea right now, Kim Choong-Ki is a legend—the good unsung hero behind their nation’s ascendancy in chip manufacturing. However its dominance on the earth market is now beneath risk. Though South Korea has competed furiously with Taiwan in latest many years, its most formidable challenger sooner or later will doubtless be China, whose bold
Made in China 2025 plan prioritizes semiconductor growth. Since 2000, the nation has been a significant importer of South Korean chips. However China’s latest heavy funding in semiconductors and the provision of extremely educated Chinese language engineers—together with semiconductor specialists skilled in america, Japan, and South Korea—signifies that Chinese language semiconductor corporations might quickly change into main world rivals.

Compounding the issue, the South Korean authorities has uncared for its function in supporting chip growth within the twenty first century. Practically 50 years after Kim started educating its first semiconductor engineers, the {industry} once more faces a major workforce scarcity. Specialists estimate that
several thousand new engineering specialists are needed each year, however the nation produces just a few hundred. But regardless of corporations’ pleas for extra staff and universities’ requires insurance policies that advance educational training and analysis, the federal government has performed little.

Towards the tip of his profession, Kim had change into involved with the restrictions of the sort of “engineer’s thoughts” that had taken root in South Korea. “The financial growth of Korea was depending on reverse engineering and following superior international locations,” he stated in an interview in 1997. That fast-follower method, he added, relied on an academic system that taught college students “methods to learn maps”—to establish a identified product objective and plot a course for reaching it. “And who made the maps? Superior international locations.” He thus concluded, “We now have to vary our instructional coverage and train our college students how to attract maps.”

Kim himself could not have totally realized this bold imaginative and prescient of cultivating a rustic of creative-minded engineers, able to pioneering really groundbreaking applied sciences that may safe his nation’s management on the world stage. However hopefully his successors have taken his recommendation to coronary heart. The way forward for South Korea is dependent upon it.

To learn extra, see “Transfer of ‘Engineer’s Mind’: Kim Choong-Ki and the Semiconductor Industry in South Korea,” Engineering Research 11:2 (2019), 83-108.