Chiba, Japan, Sep. 20th, 2002 - UMC JAPAN (UMCJ) today announced that effective October 1st, Yukio Sakamoto will resign as its president. The position of president will be taken over by Vice Chairman H. J. Wu. After his resignation, Mr. Sakamoto will continue his involvement in the semiconductor foundry industry in the position of Consultant for United Microelectronics Corporation (UMC) of Taiwan. In addition to his new role as president, Mr. Wu will retain his current positions of Vice Chairman and Board Director at UMCJ, Japan's only pure-play foundry company.

• H. J. Wu's career summary is as follows.
• May. 2002 Board Director and Vice Chairman, UMCJ (present)
• Oct. 2001 Board Director, UMCJ
• Jun. 2001 Chairman, DuPont Photomasks Taiwan, Ltd., (present)
• Mar. 2001 Advisor, UMCJ
• Jan. 1999 Board Director, UMCJ
• Dec. 1997 President, UMC
• Jun. 1991 Vice President, UMC
• Apr. 1980 Manager of Process Department, UMC
• Jun. 1976 M.S. CH. E., National Taiwan University

UMC JAPAN (UMCJ) is Japan's first and only dedicated-silicon foundry, which provides advanced technologies and semiconductor manufacturing for contract customer. The company is a subsidiary of Taiwan based UMC (United Microelectronics Corp.). Further information can be found at http://www.umcj.com/eng.