According to Yonhap News Agency, Samsung Electronics’ labor and management sides signed a ‘Preliminary Agreement on 2026 Performance Bonuses’ on May 20 in Suwon, Gyeonggi Province. Employees working in the Device Solutions (DS) division, which handles semiconductor operations, stand to receive up to approximately 600 million Korean won (around 2.72 million RMB) in performance bonuses this year. Building on the existing Annual Performance Incentive (OPI) system, the agreement also introduces a special semiconductor performance bonus for the DS division; this bonus is funded by 10.5% of the company’s total earnings and carries no upper limit. Forty percent of these funds will go to some 78,000 DS division employees, while the remaining 60% will be allocated between the memory chip business unit and administrative departments at a ratio of 1:0.7.
Industry analysts predict Samsung Electronics will achieve operating profits of 300 trillion Korean won this year, which would make roughly 31.5 trillion won available for the special semiconductor performance bonuses. On average, DS division staff would receive about 160 million won each, while memory chip workers combined with OPI payouts could reach the maximum bonus cap of 600 million won per person. It is worth noting that employees working in loss-making divisions will not be eligible for OPI bonuses, leaving a sizeable income gap between different departments.