Bonus Disputes Accelerate Robot Era as Top 4 Groups Push All-Out AX Drive

*Editor's Note: 'AI PRISM' (Personalized Report & Insight Summarizing Media) is an "artificial intelligence (AI)-based customized news recommendation and summarization service" developed with support from the Korea Press Foundation. It selects and provides six customized news items by reader type.

[[LINK_0]]1. "Suffering Through Bonus Disputes Every Year"...Sweeping Overhaul of Manufacturing AX and Recruitment Roadmaps Inevitable[[/LINK_0]]

- Key Summary: As the enforcement of the Yellow Envelope Act coincides with the spread of demands for "performance bonuses equal to N% of operating profit," major companies including Samsung, SK (034730.KS), Hyundai Motor (005380.KS), and LG (003550.KS) are accelerating their AI and robot transformation. Hyundai Motor plans to produce 30,000 units of its humanoid "Atlas" annually starting in 2028 and deploy them at its own plants, with annual maintenance costs of 14 million won reported to be one-tenth of the 130 million won per-person labor cost. HD Hyundai Heavy Industries (329180.KS) is pushing to complete its smart shipyard FOS, which will shorten shipbuilding time by 30% by 2030, while SK hynix (000660.KS) has raised the accuracy of its AI material-property prediction system—which cuts semiconductor new-material analysis time by 75%—to 90%. Yoo Byung-joon, a professor of business administration at Seoul National University, said, "The recent performance-bonus disputes among labor unions could become a catalyst leading to labor flexibility," raising the need for a complete redesign of recruitment strategies.

[[LINK_1]]2. Chairman Jay Y. Lee Makes Surprise Visit to Taiwan's MediaTek... Shakes TSMC with 'Memory-Foundry Bundling' Sales Strategy[[/LINK_1]]

- Key Summary: Samsung Electronics Chairman Jay Y. Lee visited MediaTek's headquarters in Taiwan right after a wage negotiation was concluded, meeting with CEO Rick Tsai and others. As memory supply shortages intensify amid surging demand for AI servers, he is said to have explored bundling sales that combine memory supply with foundry services. The semiconductor industry assesses that "Samsung is accelerating customer diversification by presenting a strong alternative to global fabless firms wearied by TSMC's supply disruptions and price hikes." Having secured foundry orders from Tesla and Qualcomm last year, Samsung Electronics is now aiming to win a major contract in Taiwan as well, making visible its strategy of using memory competitiveness as leverage for a foundry rebound.

- Key Summary: POSCO International will jointly invest a total of 200 million dollars with U.S.-based ReElement Technologies to build a rare earth separation and refining joint venture plant with an annual capacity of 6,000 tons. Targeting pilot production in the fourth quarter of next year and mass production in 2028, it is expected to become the first integrated production base in the United States vertically integrating everything from rare earth separation and refining to permanent magnet manufacturing and waste magnet recycling. With China holding more than 90% of the global rare earth refining and processing sector, and export controls tightening amid deepening U.S.-China trade tensions, analysts say opportunities are growing for Korean companies building de-China supply chains. Lee Kye-in, president of POSCO International, said, "This is the starting point for building a critical mineral value chain within the United States that extends from raw materials to final products."

[[LINK_3]]4. Trump-Style Cultivation Extends to Quantum Industry...U.S. Government Secures Corporate Stakes Too[[/LINK_3]]

- Key Summary: The Trump administration has supported nine quantum computing companies including IBM, Rigetti, and D-Wave with 2 billion dollars (about 3 trillion won), extending the "Trump-style technology cultivation" model—which even secures corporate stakes—to the quantum field. By IBM's estimate, quantum computing is expected to create up to 850 billion dollars in economic value by 2040, and McKinsey analyzed that private investment in 2025 reached 12.6 billion dollars, a 6.3-fold surge from the previous year. China elevated quantum technology to one of its seven future industries in the 15th Five-Year Plan, and Origin Quantum recorded more than 20 million cloud accesses from 145 countries in its first year of launch with its 72-qubit commercial processor. As the U.S.-China technology supremacy race spreads to the quantum field, analysts say it is time for Korean companies to also examine related technology trends and the possibility of joining supply chains.