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Labor Minister Kim Young-hoon argued that society should redistribute semiconductor giants’ excess profits, while Industry and Trade Minister Kim Jeong-gwan said that investment must come first.
On the 29th, Kim Young-hoon appeared on OhmyTV’s YouTube program Park Jung-ho’s Hotspot and characterized the debate over dividing excess profits as a proposal for shared growth aimed at reducing inequality and strengthening corporate competitiveness. \”I’m not proposing we simply cut open the goose’s belly,\” he said. \”I’m saying we should create a bigger goose and other geese.\”
He pushed back against critics who have labeled the idea communism, asking, \”How does social dialogue amount to communism?\” He added, \”My concern is whether sharing excess profits should be limited only to regular employees at prime contractors, and whether there is no path to joint growth between contractors and subcontractors.\”
Kim said some warn these measures would weaken corporate competitiveness, but he argued competitiveness comes from a healthy industrial ecosystem. \”If supplier firms grow alongside the majors, the competitiveness of the entire semiconductor industry will rise,\” he said, stressing that failing even to start the conversation risks repeating the same problems.
By contrast, Kim Jeong-gwan wrote on his Facebook page that in the AI era the race will be decided by overwhelming speed and scale, and he urged that profits generated by the semiconductor industry be channeled into productive reinvestment for the future. \”This is a make-or-break moment,\” he wrote.
He warned that a single missed investment could collapse the industrial ecosystem and push Korean firms onto an almost irrecoverable path. \”What we need now is not hesitation but decisive action; not dispersion but concentration,\” he said.
The presidential office said both sides’ arguments warrant public debate. At a briefing the previous day, senior presidential spokesperson Kang Yoo-jung said the labor minister had raised a range of social issues and long-term challenges that the country should discuss openly, and that the industry minister is speaking from the industry’s perspective when addressing companies’ excess operating profits or margins.
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