ⓒYONHAP News

Just about a year ago, Japan toughened its bilateral export restrictions on high-tech materials in apparent retaliation against South Korean court decisions on Japan’s wartime forced labor.

President Moon Jae-in on Thursday marked the passing of the first year of the trade dispute by visiting SK Hynix, which joined the government campaign to substitute Japanese imports with Korean parts and materials.

"In about a year, we succeeded in the local production of hydrogen fluoride and fluorine polyimide, for which we depended on Japanese imports, and doubled the production of hydrofluoric acid. We also stabilized the supply of EUV photoresists by investing in global corporations."

Noting that South Korean companies didn't see production glitches in the past year, Moon said it's time to turn the crisis into an opportunity.

"We will take a different path than Japan. South Korea will turn the crisis into an opportunity to become a powerhouse in high-tech parts and materials and equipment. And that will lead to our international cooperation by contributing to the stabilization of the global supply. That's the Korea path that we would like to take."

Moon also revealed the government's initiative to foster the parts and materials industry, promising an investment of one-and-a-half trillion won, or around one-point-25 billion dollars, to attract international high-tech projects and create a global production cluster in the nation.