South Korea's AI boom: $410,000 bonus for every worker

In South Korea's Gyeonggi Province, a chip worker just opened his bonus notice: 626 million won, around $410,000. His base salary is $52,000.

The bonus is eight times his annual salary.

Ten percent of profit, for everyone

Behind the bonus is the AI memory boom. SK Hynix is the world's largest manufacturer of HBM, the fast memory that Nvidia's AI chips need, and has sold out its entire production through the end of 2026, mostly to Nvidia.

That brings in record profits. In the first quarter of 2026, SK Hynix earned 37.6 trillion won operationally, a gain of 405 percent year-over-year, at a margin of around 72 percent.

The company is thus ahead of Nvidia and overtook Samsung for the first time in annual profit in 2025.

Crucial is what happens with the money. SK Hynix eliminated the bonus cap in September 2025 and now pays out 10 percent of operating profit to employees.

• Samsung followed suit: 10.5 % of chip profit goes to employees, forced through with the threat of an 18-day strike.

With expected annual profit of up to 250 trillion won, the bonus pool grows to around 25 trillion won, distributed among about 35,000 employees.

A problem others dream of

On June 17, the Bank of Korea officially warned: If a single industry pays such high bonuses, wage demands could spill over and fuel inflation. The central bank expects 2.7% inflation for 2026, above the 2% target.

This is the concern of a country that passes the AI boom on to its workers. In the first quarter, special bonuses in the IT sector rose by 60.6 percent, while wages outside only grew by 2.1%.

You see it in the stores. In Suwon and in the luxury departments of shopping centers, sales are picking up strongly, said Vice Central Bank Governor Lee Jiho. At the Shinsegae chain, luxury sales rose 53.6%, jewelry 146.3%, watches 85.3%.

The stock market has already priced in the effect: Shinsegae is up 190% since the beginning of the year, Lotte Shopping 148%, Hyundai Department Store 120%.

Taiwan also knows the expectation

The pattern extends beyond Korea. TSMC, the world's most important chip manufacturer, posted record profit of 1.72 trillion Taiwan dollars in 2025 and paid an average of around $87,000 bonus per employee, only a fraction of the Korean sums.

But when TSMC wanted to cut bonuses by 15 percent to finance investments, the otherwise union-free employees threatened to strike and explicitly cited Samsung and SK Hynix. Management promised a raise of over 30 percent.

In Asia, profit sharing is considered part of the deal. Those who build the boom expect their share, and get it.

For the coming year, analysts already expect bonuses at SK Hynix of nearly $900,000 per capita.

FROM THE TEAM

Anyone who wants to see this boom with their own eyes should go where it's being created.

Last week, we received this email from one of the world's largest hearing aid manufacturers:

That's exactly what we're here for.

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OUR CONTENT PARTNER: LIMEN CHINA

China develops the brain-industrial policy interface

Brain-Computer Interfaces (BCI) long were considered a future topic for research labs, Silicon Valley visionaries, and spectacular individual projects like Neuralink.

In China, the current 5-year plan is turning this into a strategically supported technology field with a national roadmap and a growing industrial ecosystem.

For German boards, executives, and investors, the question lies in how Beijing's dynamics and focus in this field can best be leveraged. And what Germany actually has to contribute here.

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