South Korea wants to maintain global dominance and gain a competitive edge in advanced logic chips.

In 2022, there were only five ipos raising more than $100m in the whole year. But analysts believe South Korea's IPO market will gain momentum this year, with a number of companies valued at more than 1 trillion won ($755.5 million) expected to list in the second half of the year.

Earlier, Seoul said it wanted to strengthen its local supply chain and create the world's largest semiconductor cluster, investing $422bn by 2026 in sectors including chips, batteries, robotics, electric cars and biotechnology.

[South Korea's Ministry of Science, Technology, Information and Communication released its first 10-year blueprint for chip industry research and development on May 9, setting out technological progress goals in three areas: next-generation memory and logic chips and advanced packaging, pledging to support the semiconductor industry in producing faster, more energy-efficient and larger capacity chips to maintain global dominance and gain a competitive edge in advanced logic chips.]

GigaVis went public on May 24 this year and is now worth around one trillion won. Founded in 2004, GigaVis focuses on manufacturing and selling equipment such as Automatic Optical Inspection Equipment (AOI) for detecting semiconductor substrates and Automatic Optical Repair Equipment (AOR) for repairing defective circuits. Last year, Gigavis recorded 43.9 billion won in operating profit, up 176 percent from a year earlier. Sales rose 127 per cent to 99.7bn won.

The listing of GigaVis has given the Korean industry a big boost. Other Fabless or electronics companies with IPO plans this year include:

FADU Technology, a fabless storage solution company, applied for preliminary approval from the Korea Stock Exchange in March. FADU Technology, founded by former engineers from Samsung Electronics Co LTD and SK Hynix Corp, joins the ranks of unicorns or private companies worth $1 billion or more.

Doosan Robotics, the group's robotics unit, selected Mirae Asset Securities and Korea Investment & Securities as underwriters in March and will soon apply for preliminary approval from the Korea Stock Exchange.

EcoPro Materials Co., a unit of EcoPro Group, a leading supplier of battery materials for electric vehicles It applied for preliminary approval from the Korea Stock Exchange last month.

LS Materials Co., a unit of LS Group that makes energy storage devices, is preparing to file for listing on the Kosdaq secondary market next month.

LG CNS Co. in communications and services and SK ecoplant Co. in renewable energy. It is also considering joining the stock market in the second half of this year.