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Just a few years ago, the IT industry in Pangyo was reveling in an unprecedented boom. During the COVID-19 pandemic, as games and contactless services flourished, the most coveted job was, without question, "IT developer." Developers could suddenly name their price, and the job-hopping market grew so active that an industry saying went, "Three years is a long stay."
The procession of Kakao union members that filled the area in front of Pangyo Station on the 10th of this month laid bare the changed status of Korea's so-called Silicon Valley. Developers who once weighed their options before switching jobs are now demanding "job security." The sight of workers—from fresh-faced new hires to seasoned senior staff—holding yellow placards and chanting in disciplined unison was something Pangyo had never seen before. One IT worker lamented with self-mockery, "It feels like just yesterday that we could pick and choose jobs based on the conditions."
Behind their march into the streets lies the emergence of artificial intelligence (AI). With the arrival of an era in which a single developer can replace the work of three or four people, the once-active career mobility has become a thing of the past, and the industry has begun discussing restructuring in earnest. One developer with eight years of experience confided, "Not only is mid-career hiring blocked, but I can't shake the feeling that even at my current company I could be replaced by AI." Amid job insecurity, the "job for life" is again becoming a virtue. Tenure has noticeably lengthened—at Naver (5.99 years at the end of 2022 to 7.7 years) and Kakao (4.75 to 6.25 years), as well as at game companies once known for frequent turnover, such as Netmarble (4.4 to 5.9 years) and NCSoft (6.2 to 7.5 years).
Caught in the whirlwind of the AI transformation, likened to a "fifth industrial revolution," Pangyo faces an unprecedented test. The incursion of global Big Tech has rendered the boundaries between domestic and overseas markets meaningless, and competition over new growth areas such as agentic AI, physical AI, and cloud has grown ever fiercer. It is a time when neither companies nor their members can survive without proving their own worth. If they remain mired in the "pie-splitting" conflicts of the past boom era ahead of this great turning point, they will ultimately miss the golden window for survival. Now is the time for labor and management to put their heads together and find a compromise for coexistence and a workforce overhaul suited to this era of technological upheaval.
