Korean EPC semiconductor packages are contracted through a short list of firms. Samsung Electronics’ Pyeongtaek work runs through Samsung C&T and Samsung E&A, and SK hynix’s Yongin cluster runs through SK ecoplant. For a foreign equipment or materials supplier, the question that decides everything else is which of those layers signs your contract, because that answer sets your counterparty, your payment terms and whether you need a Korean construction licence at all.
This guide sits under the reference guide to Korea’s semiconductor industry and covers the engineering, procurement and construction tier specifically. Campus phases and buying windows at Godeok are covered in the guide to Samsung’s Pyeongtaek campus, the two Yongin projects in the guide to the Yongin semiconductor cluster, and market size and buyer split in the Korea semiconductor equipment market breakdown. What follows is the contracting layer between them.
Data current as of September 2026. Contract figures below are taken from the parties’ own filings on Korea’s DART disclosure system, with the filing date beside each.
Which Firms Actually Build Korean Fabs?
Three names sit at the prime contract layer on the two owners’ current projects, and each is tied to one owner. Other contractors take packages alongside them, so read this as the top of the chain and not the whole of it.
Samsung C&T (삼성물산). Its construction division lists advanced industrial facilities and cleanrooms inside its building business on its own site, alongside towers, airports and data centres. The division reported revenue of 14.1486 trillion won, operating profit of 535.5 billion won and 5,828 employees as of the end of 2025 on Samsung C&T’s corporate site, read on 14 September 2026. It also runs a dedicated semiconductor infrastructure research centre, listed in its own technology menu, which is a reasonable signal of where the division puts its engineering depth.
Samsung E&A (삼성이앤에이). The company changed its name from Samsung Engineering at its 57th general shareholders’ meeting on 21 March 2024, per its own newsroom release of that date. Use the current name in correspondence, because the old one still dominates search results and older vendor records. Its industrial business page claims cleanroom construction as a core capability for semiconductors, displays, secondary batteries and electronic parts, and its recent Korean filings show it taking Pyeongtaek packages from Samsung Electronics as an affiliate.
SK ecoplant. Its own newsroom field report of 27 March 2025 describes it performing both design and construction for SK hynix’s four planned fabs and their support facilities at the Yongin cluster, on a site of about 4.15 million square metres. The same piece quotes its site manager attributing the multi-level fab design to experience on SK hynix’s M14, M15 and M16 at Icheon and Cheongju, and sets out what the first phase contains: part of the first fab, the Central Utility Building, a wastewater treatment plant and a data centre, with one treatment unit rated at about 345,000 tons per day.
One structural change is in flight. SK ecoplant’s board resolved on 27 August 2026 to absorb its subsidiary SK ecoengineering, signed the merger agreement on 28 August 2026, and set the merger date at 1 December 2026, as a small-scale merger under Article 527-3 of the Commercial Act with no new shares issued. The major-matters report it filed to DART on 27 August 2026 names SK ecoplant as the surviving company and SK ecoengineering as the company that disappears, and records that SK ecoplant already holds 100 percent of its shares. The same report’s schedule puts the creditor objection period at 29 September to 30 October 2026, and because the transaction qualifies as a small-scale merger, a board resolution stands in for shareholder approval. So name SK ecoplant on a supply agreement signed now, and carry a successor clause if your counterparty is SK ecoengineering.
Where Does the EPC Tier Sit Between the Fab Owner and You?
It sits in the middle, and it does not sit there alone. On a single fab phase, different scopes are contracted by different parties, and the filings make that visible.
Take Pyeongtaek P5 Phase 1 during the third quarter of 2026. Three suppliers disclosed work on the same phase of the same project to three different counterparties.
- Hanyang ENG disclosed a general piping package for zone 1 on 7 September 2026, worth 148.059 billion won excluding VAT, running from 15 September 2026 to 30 September 2027. Its counterparty is Samsung C&T.
- Exa ENC disclosed fit-out package B for the composite building on 14 August 2026, worth 19.017832 billion won excluding VAT, running from 14 August 2026 to 30 May 2028. Its counterparty is Samsung E&A.
- Shinsung E&G disclosed cleanroom product supply on 16 July 2026, worth 15.588 billion won excluding VAT, running from 15 July 2026 to 20 February 2027. Its counterparty is Samsung Electronics.
Read those three together and the map stops being abstract. Two EPC firms and the fab owner were each buying on the same phase of the same project in the same quarter. Which one you approach is set by what you sell, not by who is most senior.
The Shinsung filing carries one more detail worth pausing on. It is classified as goods supply (상품공급), while Exa ENC’s filing records its award as a construction work contract (건설공사계약) and Hanyang ENG’s covers a piping works package billed against construction progress. That distinction is not cosmetic in Korea, and the rest of this guide turns on it.
Who Specifies, and Who Issues the Purchase Order?
Specification and purchase separate in time, and the gap is where most foreign suppliers are either won or lost.
Facility and clean-process systems are specified during design, inside the EPC firm’s scope, and the purchase order often arrives later from the EPC firm or from a specialist below it. By the time a package is let, the technical decision is usually behind you. The fab owner’s approval still governs, because the contractor is building to the owner’s standard, so a specification win at the EPC layer and an approved position with the owner are two different things that both have to exist.
Process tools and production chemicals follow a separate route through the owner’s own procurement organisation, and nothing ships in volume until it clears qualification, a process set out in the guide to the fab qualification process in Korea. Utility categories such as ultrapure water systems sit on the construction calendar, which is why they are bought years before the tools they will eventually feed.
The specialist tier below the EPC firms is where hook-up work actually lands. Wooshin Engineering’s hook-up division page, read on 14 September 2026, defines that scope in its own terms: ultrapure water piping, vacuum piping for chamber negative pressure and for toxic and chemical gas exhaust, and bulk gas piping in electropolished, bright annealed and argon purge materials, connecting utilities into process equipment across etch, implant, diffusion, CVD, metal, metrology, CMP and photo tools. KC ENC’s hi-tech business page, read the same day, lists its projects by year and by client, and shows the same firm holding hook-up piping contracted directly with Samsung Electronics at Pyeongtaek and Hwaseong while holding gas, process cooling water and chemical piping packages contracted with Samsung C&T on P3 and P4. One specialist, two relationships, different scopes.
Shinsung E&G’s own cleanroom EPC page, read on 14 September 2026, defines the packaged alternative: everything except the building structure, meaning cleanroom equipment, HVAC and heating and cooling, electrical and communications, automatic control and process utility systems, planned, designed, fabricated, procured, built, commissioned, balanced and serviced under one scope. If your product sits inside that envelope, your realistic counterparty is a firm of that type.
What Do the Contract Terms Actually Look Like?
Korean subcontract filings publish more commercial detail than most markets do, and you can read the terms before you negotiate them.
Exa ENC’s 14 August 2026 filing sets out its conditions with Samsung E&A: a performance bond of 10 percent, a defect bond of 3 percent, a defect liability period of one year, delay damages of 0.1 percent, and progress payments made monthly within 60 days of acceptance of the delivered work, in cash at 100 percent. Hanyang ENG’s 7 September 2026 filing records a different shape with Samsung C&T: an advance payment of 10 percent within 15 days of signing, with the remaining 90 percent billed against progress.
Shinsung E&G’s 16 July 2026 filing shows the other shape. Its goods supply to Samsung Electronics records no deposit and no advance payment, and payment within 30 days of the payment request, and it discloses no performance bond, no defect bond, no defect liability period and no delay damages. The distinction the law draws between a construction subcontract and a goods supply lands in money here: bonds plus 60 days from acceptance on one side, no bonds and 30 days from request on the other.
Three sets of terms on one project phase. Treat published terms as the starting position for your own, and price the bonding and the retention into your quote before contract stage.
Now the part that is easy to get wrong. Announced contract values move, and the revision is far less visible than the announcement. Samsung C&T filed a correction on 31 August 2026 raising its Pyeongtaek P4 Phase 2 contract with Samsung Electronics for FAB and composite building finishing work from 1.37917 trillion won to 1.69971 trillion won excluding VAT, and that filing records the chain behind it: an original contract of 10 billion won signed on 6 July 2023, a construction period running to 31 December 2027, and no advance payment, with billing as the work progresses. Samsung E&A filed two corrections of its own. One on 28 July 2026 raised its P4 Phase 4 upper-building finishing contract with Samsung Electronics from 1.3288 trillion won to 1.8120839 trillion won including VAT, against an original filing of 24 September 2025 and a term running to 30 April 2027. One on 31 August 2026 raised a P4 Phase 2 package covering the green building substation, the composite building, air pollution control and ultrapure water from 883.8885 billion won to 1.0131209 trillion won including VAT, which is also a useful illustration of how much utility scope sits inside a single EPC package. Check the basis before you compare figures across filers: both Samsung E&A corrections state that their amounts include VAT, and the Samsung C&T correction states that its amount excludes it. All three carry the standard caution that contract value and term may change during execution. Any figure you read in the trade press is a snapshot of a number that is still moving.
Can You Install Your Own Equipment in Korea?
Sometimes, and statute draws that line.
Under Article 2(4) of the Framework Act on the Construction Industry (건설산업기본법, Act No. 21034, promulgated 26 August 2025 and in force from 27 November 2025), construction work includes the installation of mechanical equipment and other structures. The same provision carves out electrical work, information and communications work, firefighting facility work and national heritage repair, each of which is governed by its own act. Article 9(1) then requires anyone carrying on construction business to register by category with the Minister of Land, Infrastructure and Transport, with a proviso for minor works defined by Presidential Decree, and Article 16(1) requires a party taking a construction contract to hold registration in the category that performs that work.
The exemption is the useful part. Article 8(1)3 of the Enforcement Decree (Presidential Decree No. 36437, in force from 23 June 2026) treats installation of machinery that is readily assembled, dismantled and moved as minor construction work, but only where the party that manufactured or supplied that equipment installs it itself. Article 8(1)2 sets a separate threshold of 15 million won for specialised works, excluding gas facility work, steel structure work, cableway, lift installation, railway and track work and heating work.
So a supplier bringing in its own engineers to set and commission its own machine is in a different position from a supplier taking a piping package. Piping is squarely inside a registered category. Article 7 of the Decree sends the category list to Annex 1, and Annex 1 names the relevant specialised category as mechanical equipment and gas works (기계설비ㆍ가스공사업), with mechanical equipment works as one of its business fields, whose scope expressly includes piping and machinery installation inside a plant.
Two further provisions shape what your Korean partner can do for you. Article 29(3) bars a subcontractor from re-subcontracting work it has taken, except in defined cases and then only with written consent, which is why a partner who intends to pass your installation scope down a further tier needs to say so before signing. Article 5 allows the ministry to set standards for recognising qualifications, education and experience obtained abroad where a foreigner or foreign corporation registers a construction business, which is the route to holding registration in your own name.
Note carefully who these rules bind. They bind parties to construction contracts. A supplier selling goods under a supply contract, as Shinsung E&G did on P5 Phase 1, is not a subcontractor under this Act at all. Structuring your Korean entry as goods supply plus a separately contracted local installer is a legitimate answer, and Annex 1 attaches a condition to it. Note 1 to the annex keeps the supply of construction materials, the simple supply of machinery and plain labour supply outside a trade’s registered scope, then adds that where the same construction business operator signs both the construction contract and the contract supplying the materials for that work, the supply is treated as part of the registered construction work. The split therefore holds only where the supplier and the installer are genuinely different parties. Note 4 is worth one further check when you vet a partner’s licence: a firm registered in mechanical equipment and gas works with mechanical equipment works as its principal field may perform only that field.
What Applies Once Your People Are on Site?
The site principal carries statutory duties toward your engineers, and those duties shape the paperwork you will be asked for.
Under the Occupational Safety and Health Act (산업안전보건법, Act No. 21374, promulgated 19 February 2026, Articles 62 to 64 in force from 1 June 2026), Article 62 requires the principal to designate the site’s safety and health manager as the overall safety and health supervisor covering both its own and contractors’ workers. Article 63 requires the principal to take the necessary safety and health measures, including installing safety and health facilities, to prevent accidents among contractors’ workers at its site, while excluding direct instructions on those workers’ own work conduct such as ordering protective equipment use.
Article 64(1) then lists eight measures the principal must carry out. Three of them change what a foreign vendor’s engineers experience: a joint safety and health council of principal and contractors, confirmation that the safety training the contractor gives its own workers was actually delivered, and adjustment of work timing where mixed working could create a fire or explosion risk. The rest cover site patrols, venues and materials for that training, alarm systems and evacuation drills, and welfare facilities.
In practice this is why site access for a foreign supplier’s field engineers involves the contractor’s safety organisation as well as the fab owner’s, and why documentation, training records and work-timing coordination are asked for early. Budget engineer time for it.
How Do You Get Registered With the EPC Tier?
Through each firm’s own partner channel, and the two Samsung contractors publish theirs.
Samsung C&T answers the question directly on its own site. Its customer FAQ, read on 14 September 2026, responds to a request about becoming a partner company by directing applicants to its Partner’s Portal at secc-partners.co.kr, and states that partner registration covering account application, information changes and authorisation, together with subcontract contracting and materials purchasing, is conducted there. The same answer refers applicants to the notice posted on the portal when they visit it for the detail, so the first move is an account application at that portal and not a document pack sent to a buyer. Its shared-growth strategy page, read the same day, lists fair partner registration and selection, transparent bidding, contracting and pricing, protection of partner technical data, and a partner grievance channel with a dedicated team.
Samsung E&A publishes its own Partner Portal at partner.samsungena.co.kr, linked from its corporate site, read on 14 September 2026. Its partnership page, read the same day, describes a Business Partner Code of Conduct covering human rights, labour, safety, health, environment and ethics, distributed to partners in Korea and abroad with compliance checked and evaluated, alongside financial support, technology development support, joint overseas market entry and recruitment and training support.
For SK ecoplant and Hanyang ENG, plan on a direct approach to the company: a named contact, a scope statement matched to a package that is live now, and Korean-language capability documents.
The practical reading is that the named portals are the front door at the two Samsung contractors, and that a firm-by-firm enquiry is the honest route everywhere else. Most foreign suppliers reach all of these layers through a Korean partner who already holds a vendor code, a choice covered in the guide to choosing a semiconductor distributor in Korea.
What Should a Foreign Supplier Do Next?
Five steps, in order.
Name your counterparty before you build a pipeline. Decide from your product whether your contract sits with the fab owner, with an EPC firm or with a specialist below it. The P5 Phase 1 example above shows all three live in one quarter on one project phase.
Choose your contract type deliberately. Goods supply and construction subcontract carry different obligations under the Framework Act on the Construction Industry. If you do not intend to register a construction business in Korea, structure toward supply and contract the installation locally, keeping the two contracts with genuinely different parties, because Annex 1 treats a materials supply contract as part of the construction work where the same construction business operator signs both.
Check whether your installation scope is actually exempt. The Enforcement Decree exemption reaches machinery that its own maker or supplier installs. Piping and in-plant machinery installation sit inside a registered category, so confirm which side of that line your commissioning work falls on before you quote it.
Price the published terms. Bonding percentages, defect liability periods, delay damages and payment timing are in the filings of firms already doing your kind of work. Read two or three before your first negotiation.
Track phases, and treat every announced figure as provisional. Contract values and end dates are revised often enough that any single press report is a snapshot. Check a figure the way this guide did: open the filer’s own disclosure list on DART and look for a later correction filing, which names the submission date of the disclosure it corrects and leaves that original filing in place. Samsung C&T’s correction of 31 August 2026, filed against a disclosure of 12 March 2026, is exactly that shape.
A clean disqualification is a valid outcome of this exercise. If your product only fits scopes already closed at design stage on the current phase, the useful answer is to target the next phase and spend the interval on qualification and on a Korean partner, not on a proposal that has nowhere to land.
Frequently Asked Questions
Which companies build semiconductor fabs in Korea? Samsung C&T and Samsung E&A carry Samsung Electronics’ Pyeongtaek work, and SK ecoplant builds SK hynix fabs, including the Yongin cluster, where its own newsroom describes it performing design and construction for four planned fabs and their support facilities. A specialist tier below them holds cleanroom, piping, gas, chemical and fit-out packages, and those firms are frequently the party that issues a purchase order.
Does a foreign supplier contract with the EPC firm or with the fab owner? Both routes exist, and the scope decides. On Pyeongtaek P5 Phase 1 in 2026, disclosures show piping contracted by Samsung C&T, composite-building fit-out contracted by Samsung E&A, and cleanroom product supplied directly by Samsung Electronics. Identify which scope your product belongs to, then approach that counterparty. The fab owner does not buy everything.
Do I need a Korean construction licence to install my own equipment? Possibly not. The Enforcement Decree of the Framework Act on the Construction Industry treats installation of readily assembled and dismantled machinery as minor construction work where the maker or supplier installs it itself. Piping and in-plant machinery installation fall inside a registered specialised category, so confirm which description your commissioning work matches before committing to do it in house.
How reliable are published Korean fab contract values? Treat them as provisional. Korean contractors file corrections regularly: Samsung E&A raised a Pyeongtaek finishing contract to 1.8120839 trillion won including VAT in July 2026, and Samsung C&T raised its Pyeongtaek FAB and composite building finishing contract to 1.69971 trillion won excluding VAT in August 2026, against an original of 10 billion won in 2023. Both filings state that value and term may change, so verify against the latest filing.
Where to Take This
The EPC tier is reachable, documented and specific, and the work of entering it is mostly the work of identifying the right counterparty and the right contract form before you spend on a proposal.
Inquivix Technologies works with global semiconductor equipment, materials and clean-process companies entering Korea’s semiconductor market, covering representation, distribution, localization and qualification support. To talk through which contracting layer fits your product and how to approach it, contact Joon K Lee at joon@joonklee.com.
