South Korea seeks more flexibility and incentives from the United States to encourage its compliance with additional curbs on advanced semiconductor exports to China that Washington is considering, according to its trade minister.

"For countries or companies trying to comply with the U.S. in good faith, there should be some kind of carrots,” South Korean Trade Minister Cheong Inkyo said in his first interview with media since he took office in January. "That would help U.S. policy be embraced more easily.”

South Korea is among a handful of semiconductor powerhouses that face a potential U.S. ban on exports to China of state-of-the-art chips, including high-bandwidth memory, used to train artificial intelligence.