hankyoreh

Customers at a Huawei store in Beijing on Oct. 5. (AP/Yonhap News)

South Korean parts manufacturers whose exports to Chinese telecommunications firm Huawei were shut down by US sanctions have gotten a reprieve. But it’s unclear whether this will lead to the full resumption of exports.

Industry sources told the Hankyoreh on Oct. 27 that Samsung Display has received permission from the US Department of Commerce to export certain OLED display products to Huawei for use in smartphone manufacture. The permit doesn’t place any restrictions on the volume of parts or the period of export. Samsung Display didn’t deny this information.

This was the first South Korean company that has been allowed to export products to Huawei since Sept. 15. Exports to the Chinese company came to a halt when the US government said that permits would be required not only for semiconductors but for all products containing semiconductors made using US technology or equipment.

Other Korean companies have applied for export permits to the Commerce Department — including LG Display, which supplied OLED products to Huawei, and Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix, which supplied semiconductors — but those applications were not approved.

But the Commerce Department’s approval of Samsung Display’s application does not mean that exports to Huawei will immediately resume. It’s up to Huawei to decide whether or not to purchase the approved products.

“The parts the US has currently approved are reportedly not the latest key smartphone parts. Finished products can’t be built with display panels alone while semiconductor exports are suspended. A stable supply won’t be possible until sanctions on semiconductors are eased,” said a source in the industry.

Last month, Intel and AMD, both US semiconductor manufacturers, announced that they’d received approval from the Commerce Department to supply Huawei with semiconductors for PCs and servers. But there are still no reports of the Commerce Department approving the exports of the latest memory or non-memory semiconductors that are essential smartphone components.

That has led some in the industry to think that the US is only approving parts that are less critical or that Huawei can already purchase from other companies in China.

The OLED panel that Samsung Display is now allowed to export is also available from BOE and other Chinese firms. That makes it uncertain whether the permit will actually lead to exports.

By Koo Bon-kwon, senior staff writer

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