Taipei, Taiwan, R.O.C. - August 27, 2008 - United Microelectronics Corporation (TAIEX: 2303, NYSE: UMC), today held a meeting of the Board of Directors and Supervisors, at which the Board passed a resolution to repurchase 200 million shares from the open market. This is the twelfth share buy-back program announced by the company. The details for the share buy-back program are as follows:

1. Purpose of the share repurchase: buy back and cancel
2. Scheduled period for the repurchase: 2008/08/28~2008/10/27
3. Number of shares to be repurchased: 200,000,000 shares
4. Repurchase price range: NT$9.31 to NT$21.05. If the market price falls below the lowest range, the company is still authorized to purchase the shares.
5. The shares will be purchased directly from the open market.
6. The number of shares to be repurchased is 1.51% of the total issued shares of the company.
7. The company currently holds 704,298,951 shares of its stock.

UMC (NYSE: UMC, TSE: 2303) is a leading global semiconductor foundry that manufactures advanced system-on-chip (SoC) designs for applications spanning every major sector of the IC industry. UMC's SoC Solution Foundry strategy is based on the strength of the company's advanced technologies, which include production proven 90nm, 65nm, mixed signal/RFCMOS, and a wide range of specialty technologies. Production is supported through 10 wafer manufacturing facilities that include two advanced 300mm fabs; Fab 12A in Taiwan and Singapore-based Fab 12i are both in volume production for a variety of customer products. The company employs approximately 13,000 people worldwide and has offices in Taiwan, Japan, Singapore, Europe, and the United States. UMC can be found on the web at http://www.umc.com.