Jung Min-ho has worked as a staff writer at The Korea Times since 2012, mostly covering social and political issues. He currently belongs to the Politics & City Desk where he covers topics such as health, labor and human rights. Prior to joining the team, he was responsible for covering North Korea and sports. His article about a biosecurity breach of Middle East respiratory syndrome won him an award from the Korea Science Journalists Association in 2016. He is also the co-author of the book, "Medical Pioneers of Korea" (2019). He served as the head of the international relations committee at the Journalists Association of Korea from 2021 to 2023.
What defines 'excess' profits and who should benefit from them?
A delivery worker passes in front of an SK hynix chip plant in Icheon, Gyeonggi Province, in this file photo from Oct. 29, 2025. Chip giants' artificial intelligence‑driven windfall profits fuel debate over how to share “excess gains” with the wider society. Newsis
By Jung Min-ho
Calls to share chip giants' 'excess AI gains' lack clear rules
The debate over how to share the windfall gains from the artificial intelligence (AI) semiconductor boom is growing louder in Korea by the day.
The discussion usually centers on whether the larger-than-expected, or so-called “excess,” profits should be shared with other partners who contributed to the earnings, and how the company — or the government — should spend them.
Yet basic questions remain unresolved: What, exactly, counts as “excess gains,” and who has a legitimate claim on it?
“The government keeps talking about win-win growth and telling us to share ‘excess profits’ with subcontractors, but no one can explain what ‘excess’ actually means,” an official from the chip industry told The Korea Times on condition of anonymity. “How much gain is ‘normal,’ and at what point does it become excess? Who gets to set that standard?”
He also pointed out the current discussion lacks clarity in identifying who the profit "contributors" are.
“Which partner firms can really be said to have contributed to those profits? Maybe the ones that make key components, but what about companies that provided us furniture or office supplies? How can one decide which company contributed to what percentage of the profits?” he said.
Labor Minister Kim Young-hoon delivers an opening speech at a government-hosted forum tackling social and artificial intelligence technological innovation at the Peace & Park Convention Center in Seoul, Tuesday. Yonhap
This frustration was shared by speakers at Tuesday’s government forum focusing on charting a “new path to social innovation,” where labor, business and academic experts clashed over how far AI profit-sharing should go — and on what legal and economic basis, with some questioning whether policymakers have even agreed on what “excess gains” means in the first place.
Jung Heung-jun, a labor expert from Seoul National University of Science and Technology, noted that what officials are calling “excess gains” are simply profits far above a company’s past performance, based on the company's own benchmarks.
He suggested that as long as Korea has not even settled on whether “excess gains” should be calculated from operating profit or net profit, arguments over how much to share — and with whom — will continue to be fought in a conceptual fog rather than on clear rules.
Yoon Dong‑yeol, a business professor at Konkuk University, echoed the concern, saying the very notion of “excess profits” remains vague and that the chip industry is highly exposed to global boom-and-bust cycles.
Korea Times graphic by Cho Sang-won
This debate comes after Samsung Electronics and SK hynix, the nation’s two semiconductor giants, reported record-high operating profits on the back of AI‑driven chip demand, triggering fierce disputes over the unprecedented size of bonus payouts to employees. At Samsung, in particular, some regular employees received individual bonuses reaching as high as 600 million won ($402,000) each, sparking questions over whether it is really justifiable for such windfalls to go almost entirely to a relatively narrow group of insiders while subcontractors, irregular workers and local communities see little direct benefit.
After next year’s minimum wage was set at 10,700 won per hour the same day, Kwon Soon-won, head of the Minimum Wage Commission, noted that many workers at their partner firms who handle cleaning and facilities management “also contributed to the performance,” adding that “it would be good if at least a portion were shared with small merchants and small firms.”
Korea Times graphic by Cho Sang-won
At the forum, experts largely agreed that the unprecedented profits being made by chip giants could accelerate polarization between secure insiders at large firms and the vast majority of workers in smaller ones. Some argued that the government should respond not just with quick profit‑sharing demands, but by using additional tax revenue more strategically — for example, to build investment funds that support AI training and stronger safety nets.
Yoon argued that the answer in the AI era should be less about dividing this year’s surplus and more about building the capacity for future growth.
“In the past, the idea of social solidarity was to share the outcome, but in the future, the paradigm has to be social solidarity investment — a form of solidarity that creates the very performance we want to share by investing in people, skills and the industrial ecosystem,” he said.
The Ministry of Employment and Labor, which earlier floated the idea of finding ways to share “excess gains,” has yet to come up with detailed policy ideas.
A ministry spokeswoman said there have been no decisions on concrete criteria or policy framework for the AI and semiconductor gains or how to share them, and that the discussion is still in a very early stage.
“We do not intend to decide in advance what counts as excess gains, how much of it should be shared or by what method,” she said. “Rather, the aim is to foster a social discussion.”