Samsung Electronics’ Semiconductor (DS) division is paying out bonuses of up to roughly 60 million yen, while the smartphone and home appliance division is stuck at far lower levels — prompting labor unions to protest and demand better treatment. On the thread, opinions split between those arguing “it’s only natural to weight payouts toward the division that’s actually earning the money” and those countering “it doesn’t matter which division grinds to a halt, that’s a problem either way.” OECD data showing South Korea’s average wage now exceeds Japan’s was also brought up, spreading shock at the wage gap between the two countries.
Samsung Electronics is raking in massive profits from the AI boom, but cracks are starting to show within the organization. After handing out hefty bonuses to the semiconductor division, labor unions in other divisions are voicing objections. The huge profits are creating inequality that could undermine the “one big family” culture the company grew up on.
Union membership surges in the smartphone/appliance division
On the 21st, the labor union of Samsung’s DX division, which handles smartphones and home appliances, held a rally in front of Samsung’s Seoul headquarters demanding higher bonuses…
Samsung's chip division results aren't because the employees busted their asses — it's just that old-school commodity products suddenly started selling due to market timing. Doesn't seem like the kind of workforce you need to pay huge money to retain.
24AnonymousAug 22, 2026 21:43
Re: #3 Exactly this. Sure, there are some talented people in there, but roughly the bottom 70% of that workforce can't possibly be better than the top 10% of the phone division.
25AnonymousAug 22, 2026 21:54
Re: #3 What are you talking about? Don't you get the problem when operations grind to a halt?
4AnonymousAug 22, 2026 13:36
This thread's not gonna take off lol, since most Japanese people here have assets under 60 million yen (~$400k) anyway
5AnonymousAug 22, 2026 13:50
"60 million yen, whoa" — I figured that couldn't be the bonus for regular staff or section/department-chief level. But then again, if the union is complaining about it, that must mean even rank-and-file employees are pulling in bonuses around the 10-million-yen mark, which would be insane.
6AnonymousAug 22, 2026 13:54
Yeah, you can't blame them for being fed up. lololol
7AnonymousAug 22, 2026 14:08
This thread's not gonna take off lol, it's too painful for Japanese people. Breakdown of payouts within the DS division: Memory Business Unit (~28,000 people) — up to ~600 million won (~¥60-64 million) max. Shared/common organization (~30,000 people) — average ~430 million won (~¥45 million). Foundry / System LSI division (~20,000 people) — average ~210 million won (~¥22 million).
8AnonymousAug 22, 2026 14:16
Re: #7 That's unreal… imagine someone who switched jobs there a year ago, their whole world just changed.
9AnonymousAug 22, 2026 14:20
Re: #7 But don't they get fired before 40 anyway?
10AnonymousAug 22, 2026 14:23
No wonder Koreans want to work at Samsung. Meanwhile Japanese people were seriously running "Samsung's going bankrupt!" smear campaigns as recently as 10 years ago lol. This thread's not gonna take off.
12AnonymousAug 22, 2026 14:32
Re: #10 > "Japanese people were seriously running Samsung-is-bankrupt smear campaigns as recently as 10 years ago" That was you, wasn't it.
13AnonymousAug 22, 2026 14:40
Re: #10 "In 10 more years, Korea collapses! China collapses!" — that's the line, right?
14AnonymousAug 22, 2026 14:56
Re: #10 The AI bubble's about to pop anyway. And "Poor Village" (mocking nickname some posters use for South Korea) is finished too.
11AnonymousAug 22, 2026 14:31
Meanwhile, Kioxia — riding a profit boom of its own — handed every single employee a ¥100,000 bonus.
23AnonymousAug 22, 2026 21:04
Re: #11 That's insane lol
15AnonymousAug 22, 2026 14:57
Unions are so strong there that no profit is left for the company — no future for "Poor Village" (mocking nickname for South Korea).
17AnonymousAug 22, 2026 14:58
Re: #12 The phone threads were brutal lol, Galaxy phones got trashed like garbage.
18AnonymousAug 22, 2026 15:02
Even working in a cleanroom in a white coat at a chip fab doesn't mean you've got a PhD — plenty of them are just high school grads, so it's a tricky call.
19AnonymousAug 22, 2026 15:10
Re: #14 Hyundai, Samsung, LG, Huawei, Xiaomi, BYD — in the end, neither Korea nor China collapsed, did they.
27AnonymousAug 22, 2026 22:05
Re: #9 I guess it doesn't matter since they're earning that much anyway.
29AnonymousAug 22, 2026 22:11
After pushing rivals out with pricing strategy, now it's basically a monopoly game. Going forward you can't source memory chips without Samsung and SK Hynix. Sure, it'd be great if Chinese makers stepped up, but their focus is the domestic Chinese market, not the global one. For this whole setup to collapse, regular people would need to be able to print their own memory chips.
30AnonymousAug 22, 2026 22:12
If you hand out bonuses that large per person, you'd end up paying more than the profit each employee actually generates.
31AnonymousAug 22, 2026 22:13
Re: #25 Most of them are high-school-grad line workers, or even less. In semiconductors the manufacturing equipment does the work automatically — there's no real craftsmanship involved, unlike the machinery industry.
32AnonymousAug 22, 2026 22:35
If Japan dissolves NHK and wipes out those staffers earning 10 million yen a year, the Japan-Korea wage gap will widen even further. After all, it's those NHK "staff members" — earning over 10 million yen, the very people netizens love to bash — who are propping up Japan's average wage.
33AnonymousAug 22, 2026 22:37
I wonder what happens if you get hit with a transfer order? Been curious about that since last year.
34AnonymousAug 23, 2026 00:10
Korean labor unions are seriously unusual — the company can't touch them.
35AnonymousAug 23, 2026 08:49
Operating profit: 10 trillion yen
36AnonymousAug 23, 2026 13:29
Well, the gap was way too extreme, but I guess that's what happens when bonuses get paid out based on revenue share.
37AnonymousAug 24, 2026 11:02
Revenue share? What are you even talking about?
38AnonymousAug 24, 2026 19:39
Wow, insane lol
39AnonymousAug 24, 2026 20:00
It's not just Samsung — the average figures are the bigger problem. According to the OECD, for fiscal year 2024, South Korea's average annual wage was $48,922, while Japan's was $41,509.
Background and Key Points
Samsung’s bonus system is built around what it calls the OPI (Overtime Performance Incentive), a semiannual payout that can run up to 800% of a division’s monthly base salary depending on how that division’s profit target was met — a structure unique to Korean chaebols and unlike Japan’s seniority-linked bonus norms. The company is split into DS (Device Solutions, semiconductors) and DX (Device eXperience, phones/TVs/appliances), and because DS has ridden the AI-driven memory and HBM boom to record profits, its OPI payouts vastly outstrip DX’s. The August 21 rally by the DX union outside Samsung’s Seoul headquarters is the latest flashpoint in a recurring, structural gap, not a one-off dispute.
The thread’s actual disagreement wasn’t over whether the gap exists, but over whether it’s *deserved* — one camp argued bonuses should simply track which division is printing money, while others pointed out that DS’s windfall is more about favorable memory-chip pricing and timing than employee effort, and that a struggling DX could just as easily drag the whole company down.
What outside readers likely miss is that a large share of DS’s roughly 78,000 workers are fab line staff running automated equipment, not the PhD engineers the “semiconductor genius” image implies — a point posters raised to question whether ¥60 million payouts are proportionate. Also worth noting: the OECD average-wage comparison cited (Korea $48,922 vs Japan $41,509 for FY2024) measures national averages, not Samsung salaries, so it’s a much blunter statistic than the bonus story it got attached to.
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