Korea's Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy announced that the country overtook Japan in IC sales last year to become the second largest semiconductor device supplier in the world, following the United States, due to the growth in market share of Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix, according to Korea IT News on January 21. The global semiconductor device market in 2013 amounted to US$317.9 billion, of which Korean vendors grabbed around US$50.1 billion, or 15.8% of the market. Japan made US$44.3 billion, which is translated into 13.9% market share. The major items leading to Korea's advancement were memory semiconductors, such as DRAM (Dynamic Random Access Memory) and NAND flash.