South Korea urges tech giants to share AI chip windfalls

South Korea’s labor minister urged the country’s biggest tech companies to share AI-driven chip profits with suppliers, subcontractors and workers, arguing that the boom should not widen inequality across the semiconductor chain.

Kim Young-hoon called for public dialogue among government, business, unions and suppliers on how to distribute what he described as excess profits after taxes. He singled out companies such as Samsung Electronics, saying firms that beat profit targets should consider sharing more of the upside with the people and businesses that helped produce it. Kim, a former labor activist appointed by left-leaning President Lee Jae Myung, cast the idea as both economic policy and a social compact.

The timing gave the proposal extra weight. Samsung Electronics, the world’s largest memory chip maker, had just settled a wage dispute with its union, helping avert a strike that could have rattled global chip supplies and damaged the South Korean economy. Nearly 74% of the 62,616 workers who voted backed the tentative deal, which delivered substantial bonuses to memory-chip workers. Kim’s role in brokering that agreement gave him unusual influence with one of South Korea’s most important corporate groups.

The broader economic backdrop strengthened his argument. South Korea’s exports rose in May at the strongest annual pace in more than four decades, helped by AI-driven chip demand. The OECD has warned that semiconductor production is highly complex and depends on an intricate global supplier ecosystem, so disruptions can ripple well beyond a single factory or wage settlement. In Korea, the OECD has also said strong exports have supported growth, while reforms to improve fair competition in the domestic market and reduce labour-market dualism remain important for more inclusive expansion.

That is why Kim’s pitch matters beyond one wage deal. By pushing chip windfalls into a public debate over redistribution, Seoul signaled a more interventionist approach to AI’s gains, one that could shape labor relations, industrial strategy and the political legitimacy of the country’s semiconductor boom. It also posed a larger question now facing the U.S. and Europe: whether AI wealth will stay concentrated in corporate balance sheets or be shared more directly with the workers and suppliers who help create it.