SEOUL, May 20 (AJP) -With a nationwide strike at Samsung Electronics just hours away, South Korean Labor Minister Kim Young-hoon on Wednesday personally stepped into wage negotiations after government-mediated arbitration collapsed, underscoring mounting fears in Seoul that a prolonged walkout could destabilize the semiconductor industry at the center of the global AI boom.
The Ministry of Employment and Labor said Kim would directly oversee renewed talks between Samsung management and the union beginning at 4 p.m. at the Gyeonggi Regional Labor Office, in what officials described as an extraordinary attempt to keep dialogue alive after the National Labor Relations Commission failed to broker a compromise.
The minister-led negotiations differ from the commission’s formal post-mediation process and are not intended to produce a legally binding settlement.
Instead, the government is seeking to pressure both sides back into voluntary negotiations as concerns grow that the planned 18-day strike could disrupt chip production, exports and investor confidence by flagging an extraordinary authority to disallow a strike in an industrial site should it cause serious damage to national economy.
Samsung and the union participated in a second round of post-mediation talks from May 18 but failed to narrow differences over key issues including the distribution formula for performance-based bonuses across business divisions.
The labor commission proposed a compromise package balancing both sides’ positions. While the union accepted the proposal, Samsung management withheld a final decision, prompting the commission to declare the mediation unsuccessful.
The collapse of negotiations intensified speculation that the government could invoke emergency arbitration powers, a rarely used authority allowing Seoul to suspend strikes and force compulsory mediation in industries deemed critical to the national economy.
Labor Ministry spokesperson Hong Kyung-eui said the government would continue supporting labor-management talks “without being bound by formalities” but cautioned that it was “premature” to comment specifically on the possible invocation of emergency arbitration powers.
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