SEOUL -South Korea requested from the United States incentives such as tax deductions and infrastructure construction to ease the U.S. investment of Korean firms such as Samsung Electronics, its presidential office said on Friday.

South Korean President Moon Jae-in, in Washington for a summit with U.S. President Joe Biden, told a gathering of U.S. Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo, her South Korean counterpart and CEOs of Qualcomm, Samsung and other leading businesspeople that both countries can benefit by strengthening supply chain cooperation.

Biden has spurred on support for the U.S. chip industry amid a global chip shortage that has hit automakers and other industries.

He has met executives from major companies including Samsung in April and previously announced plans to invest $50 billion in semiconductor manufacturing and research.

Samsung plans to invest $17 billion for a new plant for chip contract manufacturing in the United States, South Korea's presidential Blue House added in a statement, confirming plans previously reported.

Documents filed with Texas state officials showed that Samsung is considering Austin, Texas, as one of the sites for a new $17 billion chip plant that the South Korean firm said could create 1,800 jobs.

Meanwhile, DuPont announced plans to establish an R&D centre in South Korea to develop original chip technologies such as photoresist for extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography, the Blue House said.

  - Reuters