According to South Korean media reports, the conflict between the United States and Iran has caused damage to Qatar's natural gas facilities, and there have been signals of shortages in the supply of its natural gas byproduct helium, leading to market concerns that this critical material will limit global semiconductor production. However, apart from helium, the market has overlooked another fatal risk.

Bromine is a raw material used by professional chemical suppliers to produce semiconductor grade hydrogen bromide gas. Korean companies cannot do without this critical gas in all DRAM and NAND flash chip production.

At present, South Korean memory giants Samsung and SK Hynix together hold about 70% of the global DRAM market share and are key suppliers in the global market, but 97.5% of their bromine imports come from Israel. Other global bromine suppliers also have no spare capacity to replace Israel's blank, making Israel's supply crucial.

Due to DRAM and NAND being the foundation of all modern computing devices, the impact of bromine supply disruptions will affect the entire consumer electronics and industrial electronics industry chain, and even the defense industry.

At present, bromine suppliers in other parts of the world have almost no excess capacity to fill the supply gap in Israel. This extremely single supply structure directly determines the global supply security of storage chips based on Israel's output situation.

The Israeli multinational corporation ICL Group is the absolute core of global bromine production. Due to the extremely high bromine content in the Dead Sea, the company is able to complete production at the lowest cost in the world. At present, the combined supply of Israel and Jordan accounts for two-thirds of the global total supply.

The core of the risk lies in the high concentration of production facilities. ICL Group has established its core integrated facility for bromine extraction and conversion in the Sodom area near the Dead Sea. This location is extremely sensitive, less than 35 kilometers away from the Negev Desert that was previously attacked by military forces.

The production base is currently completely within the potential range of attack. If regional conflicts escalate further, resulting in damage to related production facilities or obstruction of transportation channels, the global storage chip supply chain will face extremely serious chain reactions.

For South Korean storage giants that heavily rely on Israeli raw materials, this geopolitical risk of supply disruption has become the most urgent challenge at present. In the global semiconductor industry chain, the single point of failure risk caused by the high concentration of upstream raw materials is becoming increasingly prominent.

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