In late February, 13 employees from South Korea’s Iljin Materials unfurled a company banner, raised their fists and posed for a photo in front of a truck. They were celebrating their first shipment of a new product to Samsung: copper foils that are about 50 times thinner than a strand of hair and critical to the production of computer chips.

The moment was a decade in the making, chief executive Yang Jeom-sik told local media. Samsung had first asked Iljin Materials to develop the technology to produce the ultra-thin copper to its specifications after Japan’s 2011 earthquake and tsunami. The disaster and ensuing disruption had highlighted the group’s overreliance on Japanese group Mitsui.

Iljin’s achievement is now a source of national pride: it reduces South Korea’s dependence on components and materials from Japan — a country against which Koreans hold bitter historical grievances. The development is also an example of the challenges that are reshaping supply chains worldwide, as companies everywhere try to cut their exposure to rising geopolitical tensions, just as governments try to boost domestic industries by onshoring manufacturing.