The Gyeonggi Nambu Provincial Police Agency has assigned the complaints against Samsung Electronics co-CEOs Jun Young-hyun and Roh Tae-moon, and SK hynix Chief Executive Kwak Noh-jung, to its Investigation Units 1 and 2, respectively, the Korea Shareholders Movement Headquarters said Wednesday.
The complaints, filed with the National Office of Investigation on July 22, allege breach of trust under the Act on the Aggravated Punishment of Specific Economic Crimes.
The shareholder group argues the executives failed to adequately review the legality of labor agreements that linked employee compensation to company performance, allowing corporate assets to be committed through collective bargaining rather than shareholder approval.
At the center of the dispute is a new generation of profit-sharing schemes adopted as South Korea's memory makers post record earnings from the global artificial intelligence boom.
The activists contend that pre-allocating a fixed share of operating profit to employee bonuses amounts to an unlawful transfer of corporate assets that should require a shareholder vote, not a negotiation between management and labor unions.
The group said it filed a separate complaint the same day with the Corruption Investigation Office for High-ranking Officials against Labor Minister Kim Young-hoon, accusing him of abuse of authority and coercion for mediating the tentative Samsung labor agreement in May. The labor ministry has not publicly responded to either set of allegations.
The complaints mark the latest escalation in an increasingly bitter fight over who should benefit from South Korea's AI-driven semiconductor windfall — shareholders or employees.
The dispute traces back to May, when Samsung Electronics narrowly avoided its first large-scale semiconductor strike, reaching a tentative wage agreement with its labor union roughly 30 minutes before a planned walkout.
The deal introduced a profit-linked bonus system — a special semiconductor performance bonus equivalent to 10.5 percent of business performance earnings — echoing a similar structure already in place at SK hynix, which allocates 10 percent of its semiconductor division's operating profit to an employee bonus pool.
Under the agreements, semiconductor employees could receive bonuses worth hundreds of millions of won if the memory divisions continue posting record profits driven by soaring demand for high-bandwidth memory chips used in AI servers. Shareholder groups condemned the deals immediately, arguing management had effectively committed future profits without investor consent and permanently raised labor costs at shareholders' expense.
The controversy has unfolded against a backdrop of unprecedented profitability.
Samsung's Device Solutions semiconductor division posted an operating margin of about 70 percent in the second quarter, while SK hynix recorded an operating margin of roughly 76 percent as AI memory demand continued to surge.
Neither Samsung Electronics nor SK hynix has publicly commented on the latest criminal complaints.
The filing of a criminal complaint does not imply wrongdoing and does not automatically lead to prosecution. But the assignment of the cases to dedicated police investigators marks the first formal criminal investigation into South Korea's increasingly contentious debate over how the gains from the AI semiconductor boom should be divided between labor and capital.
AJP Takeaway
- What: Police opened formal probes into complaints accusing Samsung Electronics co-CEOs Jun Young-hyun and Roh Tae-moon, and SK hynix CEO Kwak Noh-jung, of breach of trust over profit-linked employee bonuses; Labor Minister Kim Young-hoon faces a separate abuse-of-authority complaint.
- When: Filed July 22, 2026; assigned to Gyeonggi Nambu Provincial Police Agency units as of Aug. 5.
- Core dispute: Whether tying bonuses to a fixed share of operating profit (10.5% at Samsung, 10% at SK hynix) required shareholder approval rather than union negotiation.
- Context: Comes as Samsung's DS division and SK hynix post Q2 operating margins of roughly 70% and 76%, respectively, amid the AI memory boom.
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