Yulim Lee believes that the internal division caused by the new bonus structure is currently the biggest risk facing Samsung.

As part of its new labor deal, Samsung agreed to a bonus structure that sets aside approximately 12% of its operating profit for chip division workers.

Samsung's chip division employs approximately 60% of the company's total workforce.

The Bank of Korea warned in an internal report that a potential strike at Samsung could have a material impact on South Korea's national GDP growth.

A chief policy advisor to South Korea's president has publicly suggested that the government should consider using excess tax revenue from the tech boom to fund a citizen dividend.

The debate over AI-driven profit sharing at Samsung is having a ripple effect, with similar conversations reportedly starting at TSMC.

In 2023, Samsung's semiconductor division experienced significant financial losses due to a collapse in the traditional memory market, resulting in a zero-bonus policy for its workers.

A prolonged strike at Samsung would have negatively impacted South Korea's economy, where semiconductors accounted for 36% of total exports in the first quarter.

The labor dispute at Samsung is expected to influence other South Korean companies, with workers at Hyundai Motor and Kakao already threatening to strike for similar profit-sharing demands.

A potential strike at Samsung would have disrupted the global AI supply chain, as AI servers and data centers depend on the company's advanced memory chips.

Samsung has a corporate policy that caps employee bonuses at a maximum of 50% of their annual salary.

SK Hynix established a precedent-setting policy to give 10% of its operating profit as bonuses to employees for the next 10 years.

SK Hynix gained a competitive advantage in the AI sector by moving faster than its competitors into high-bandwidth memory (HBM) for Nvidia.

Both Samsung and SK Hynix recently saw their market capitalizations cross the $1 trillion threshold.

Samsung's semiconductor unit accounted for more than 90% of the company's profit in the first quarter.

The large disparity in bonuses between Samsung's chip division and its other units has created deep internal division and demoralization among employees.