Why Korea's chip boom is stirring hopes far from Seoul

Across Korea’s southwest, politicians have spent the last week hinting that the country’s two chip giants may be preparing investments there.

Samsung Electronics and SK hynix say they know nothing about it.

The promise was put most plainly on June 6, when Min Hyung-bae, the incoming leader of the new unified Gwangju region, told a forum that the prime minister had leaned in and told him, quietly, that "something is coming." That something, he indicated, was a share of the semiconductor boom that ...