In 2018, the production of circuit boards in South Korea reached 33.9 million square meters, with an annual decrease of 3.8%. The production scale of hard boards is 24.82 million square meters, with an annual decrease of 3.1%. With the decline in demand for RF components, the soft board PCB industry has fallen by 9.3%. The semiconductor PCB with high added value per unit area has an annual growth rate of 5.4% and a production volume of 2.55 million square meters.

The domestic market in South Korea was limited by the extended replacement cycle of smartphones and a lack of innovation in 2018, resulting in a decrease in soft board sales and inability to deliver the expected results. Additionally, the industry's high expectation for a brilliant MSAP application demand was also lower than expected. Despite the growth of the global automotive electronic PCB market, the domestic market has shown a contraction due to a decrease in sales from major customers.

On the other hand, thanks to the booming development of memory, the sales of IC modules and semiconductor substrates have increased. In addition, with the emergence of 5G, the demand for multi-layer boards for base station communication equipment has also increased.

Although it is foreseeable that the smartphone market will experience a downturn in 2019, the new demand for 5G application PCBs and foldable phone PCBs, as well as the increase in the number of smartphone lenses, is expected to slightly reduce the annual sales of PCBs to 9.65 trillion won.