The Financial Times reported on Sunday that the United States ordered South Korea to tell its chipmakers not to fill any market gaps in China if Beijing forbids the sale of semiconductors by memory chipmaker Micron Technology Inc.

The information was released in advance of South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol’s Monday encounter with President Joe Biden in the United States.

Yoon’s trip, which takes place from April 24 to 29, will be the first state visit to the United States by a South Korean leader since 2011. It will also commemorate the alliance’s 70th anniversary.

The FT said, citing people familiar with the matter, that Washington had asked Seoul to advise Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix to refrain from increasing their sales to China if Micron were to be banned as a result of a Beijing investigation.
In March, China’s internet regulator announced that it will examine the security of Micron goods marketed there. The chipmaker stated last month that its operations in China were ongoing and that it was cooperating with the government of that nation.

The Biden and Yoon administrations have worked to coordinate investments in the semiconductor industry, safeguard crucial innovations, and eliminate economic coercion, according to the White House, which made no comments in response to the FT report.

In order to prevent chip production technology from being utilized to create semiconductors for military purposes, the United States has implemented a number of export bans on China. It has placed several of China’s biggest chip companies on a blacklist, including Yangtze Memory Technologies Co Ltd., a competitor of Micron.