Transmitting Weaponized Interdependence: Exposed Chokepoints and Conditional Continuity in South Korea’s Semiconductor Sector

Research on weaponized interdependence shows how states can turn control over central network nodes into coercive capacity (Beaumier & Cartwright, 2023; Farrell & Newman, 2019; Gjesvik, 2023). This paper addresses a different problem: how such power is transmitted when measures designed to constrain China’s technological upgrading must be implemented through allied firms that are themselves critical supply-chain nodes. It asks how U.S. semiconductor chokepoint power travels through South Korean memory producers that depend on U.S.-regulated tools, services, licenses, and authorization channels while remaining embedded in China-based facilities and China-linked customer networks. I define exposed chokepoints as a form of third-node exposure. They are actors that are neither the initiator of coercion nor the formal target, but whose assets and operations become sites through which chokepoint power is implemented. Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix fit this category because they are central to global memory production, yet their China-based fabs rely on U.S.-regulated tools, software, servicing, and export-control authorizations. South Korea is therefore not treated as a unitary third-node actor, but as the home state that negotiates implementation flexibility for firms located inside this transmission mechanism. The argument is that exposed chokepoints generate conditional continuity rather than simple compliance, resistance, or decoupling. Open resistance is costly because Korean firms depend on U.S.-controlled upstream inputs and permissions. Rapid disengagement is costly because China-based facilities, customer relationships, and supply-chain operations remain commercially and operationally significant. Nor can firms maintain ordinary commercial continuity, because U.S. controls make continued operation dependent on authorization. The resulting pattern is exception-seeking compliance: firms adapt to U.S. requirements while seeking waivers, Validated End-User authorizations, licenses, and administrative flexibility. At the same time, the United States faces an implementation dilemma: it seeks to restrict China’s upgrading without abruptly disrupting allied semiconductor nodes. These dynamics produce conditional continuity, defined as continued China-linked operations under authorization dependence, upgrade constraints, and reversible permission. Methodologically, the paper uses a theory-building single-case study with paired embedded firm-facility units. South Korea is selected as a mechanism-rich case because U.S. alliance dependence, China-linked facility and commercial exposure, and globally central memory firms coexist in one setting. The empirical strategy combines exposure mapping, regulatory-event coding, and process tracing of authorization episodes from the 2022 U.S. semiconductor controls to the 2023 VEU authorization and the 2025 VEU revocation. The paper contributes to International Political Economy by shifting attention from the possession of chokepoint power to its transmission through exposed chokepoints. It shows that when weaponized interdependence travels through firms powerful in one network layer but vulnerable in another, the transmission of coercion becomes negotiated, provisional, and reversible. Conditional continuity captures this intermediate outcome between compliance and resistance, and between decoupling and ordinary commercial continuity.