The South Korean government said Wednesday that it plans to nurture the country’s chip-making industry by boosting local output of chip-making equipment.

South Korea is one of the leading memory chip manufacturing countries in the world, but there have been calls to enhance its technological base on design-related services, semiconductor-related parts, components and manufacturing machines.

According to the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy, the localization rate of semiconductor equipment has been staying at around 20 percent since the 1990s.

The ministry said it will make efforts to indigenously develop mobile CPU core, a key computing component used in smartphone applications. The ministry estimated that royalty payments for mobile CPU core increased to 350 billion won ($331 million) last year from 180 billion won in 2008. (Yonhap News)