"Sharing Chip Profits Will Cost Korea the Race," Warns Industry Minister

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

1. Kim Jung-kwan: "No Splitting Chip Profits… 52-Hour Workweek Must Be Reformed to Compete With China"

- Key Summary: Kim Jung-kwan, Minister of Trade, Industry and Energy, criticized the argument to distribute the profits of semiconductor companies such as Samsung Electronics (005930.KS) and SK hynix (000660.KS) socially, calling it an act of cutting open the belly of the last remaining goose that lays golden eggs. At the Kwanhun Club debate at the Press Center in Jung-gu, Seoul, on the 6th, Kim warned that China's Changxin Memory Technologies (CXMT) is investing beyond its revenue, and that if profits are shared, the semiconductor market will no longer be ours in one to two years. This drew a line against Presidential Chief of Staff for Policy Kim Yong-beom's national dividend and Employment and Labor Minister Kim Young-hoon's Korean-style social solidarity wage policy, and he said that revisions to the Capital Markets Act and Commercial Act, which would require shareholders' meeting approval for the distribution of operating profits, are under discussion with related ministries. Kim also argued that China's localization of lithography equipment was a major shock, and that the 52-hour workweek system should not block the will to work, while conveying the U.S. position that overproduction tariffs under Section 301 of the U.S. Trade Act will be announced within this month and that the total tariff on Korea will not exceed 15%.

2. Big Deals in Advanced Industries Like AI and Bio… "100 Trillion Won in Foreign Capital Poised to Sweep In"

- Key Summary: The acquisition targets of foreign private equity fund (PEF) managers in Korean companies are expanding to future growth engines of the national economy such as artificial intelligence (AI), mobility, renewable energy, bio and healthcare, and K-beauty. According to Seoul Economic Daily's Signal League Table and industry tallies, foreign capital accounted for more than 70% of the domestic market for mergers and acquisitions (M&A) worth 500 billion won or more last year, and this share is estimated to have risen further this year. In fact, France's Air Liquide acquired DIG Airgas for 4.85 trillion won, EQT Partners acquired Douzone Bizon for a total of 3.2 trillion won, and Kohlberg Kravis Roberts' (KKR) acquisition of SK Group's renewable energy business and Blackstone's acquisition of Futronic were also completed. Meanwhile, unlike the European Union (EU), which applies equal supervisory regulations to foreign managers through the Alternative Investment Fund Managers Directive (AIFMD), Korea lacks proper means to directly regulate foreign managers. Concerns are emerging that a structure in which only domestic capital is disadvantaged could deepen.

3. Even a 'Legend' Departs… Google, Behind in AI, Builds Mountain View One Team

- Key Summary: Demis Hassabis, who oversaw the development of Google's Gemini, is stepping down as CEO of DeepMind. Google CEO Sundar Pichai said on the 5th that Hassabis will serve as chairman of DeepMind and chief scientist of Alphabet. However, this personnel move came right after Jeff Dean, Alphabet's chief scientist who was Google's 30th employee and founded Google Brain, departed after 27 years, leading to interpretations that it is intended to fill that gap. Dean left the company along with colleagues Sanjay Ghemawat, Oriol Vinyals, and Quoc Le, and earlier this June, key personnel departures continued, with Transformer paper co-author Noam Shazeer moving to OpenAI and John Jumper, who shared the Nobel Prize for AlphaFold research, moving to Anthropic. With Google yet to release Gemini 3.5 Pro, which it had announced for release this June, the DeepMind CEO position will be filled by former Chief Technology Officer (CTO) Koray Kavukcuoglu, who was promoted to senior vice president and will report directly to CEO Pichai. Assessments are emerging that Google, which decided to invest $205 billion in AI this year, will find it difficult to avoid short-term performance pressure.

4. Korea Zinc (010130) Becomes an Urban Mine… Silver Sales Alone Exceed 4 Trillion Won

- Key Summary: Korea Zinc posted its best first-half performance ever this year, driven by expanded sales of silver, a byproduct of the zinc concentrate smelting process. According to the Financial Supervisory Service, first-half revenue on a consolidated basis was 12.445 trillion won and operating profit was 1.333 trillion won, up 62.5% and 151.5% respectively from the same period last year, while silver sales surged 170.4% to about 4.108 trillion won. Thanks to its technological competitiveness with a silver recovery rate reaching the high 90% range, when the silver price rises by $10 per ounce, its earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA) improves by 5-6%, far ahead of global mining companies such as South32 (3.0%) and Glencore (1.1%). In addition, with the global silver market recording a supply shortage for five consecutive years amid expanding demand for semiconductors, data centers, artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure, and solar power, Korea Zinc plans to begin early production of germanium intermediate materials, whose prices surged due to China's export controls, through its subsidiary KEMCO within this month.

5. [Exclusive] 11 PEF Regulation Bills in One Year… Only Foreign Firms Smile

- Key Summary: As revisions to the Capital Markets Act regulating private equity funds (PEFs) are being proposed one after another in the National Assembly, controversy over reverse discrimination is arising as regulations apply only to domestic PEFs. According to the investment banking (IB) industry, the latest Asia buyout funds of the world's top seven PEF managers primarily active in Korea—Blackstone, KKR, Carlyle, TPG, EQT, Bain Capital, and CVC—total 100 trillion won, but they raise most of their funds overseas and are exempt from direct regulation under domestic law. In contrast, the amendments to improve the institutional-only PEF system proposed since July 2025 total 11, including borrowing limit regulations, strengthened reporting obligations to financial authorities, disclosure of manager compensation, and prior notification to worker representatives when acquiring management control. As a result, prospects are emerging that as the standing of domestic PEFs, which should serve as a catalyst for industrial restructuring, shrinks, they could hand over their home turf to foreign capital.

6. POSCO Future M (003670) Breaks Into LFP Market… Long-Term Supply of 190,000 Tons of Cathode Materials

- Key Summary: POSCO Future M is entering the market in earnest, agreeing to a large-scale, long-term supply of cathode materials for lithium iron phosphate (LFP) batteries with a leading domestic battery maker. Accordingly, it will supply more than 190,000 tons of LFP cathode materials over six years from next year through 2032, and plans to sign a formal contract during the third quarter after discussing specific terms. This agreement is a measure to preemptively respond to surging North American energy storage system (ESS) demand as power demand soars amid the expansion of data centers for artificial intelligence (AI), and the company