Home > Business > Economy

AI bonus frenzy raises image of blue-collar jobs as more workers seek to join 'kingsanjik'

Published: 25 May. 2026, 07:00

JIN MIN-JI
[email protected]

Employees at KG Mobility’s Pyeongtaek plant work on underbody components for the the company's Torres EVX model in this photo provided on April 24, 2024. [KG MOBILITY]

[BEHIND THE NUMBERS]

In Korea, manufacturing workers at major conglomerates are broadly called "kingsanjik," a portmanteau of “king” and the Korean word for production worker to refer to the hefty compensation associated with the job. The word symbolizes a broader reassessment of the country’s traditional career hierarchy that often viewed white-collar roles as higher than blue-collar ones.

University degrees and white-collar careers have long been regarded as clear markers of success in Korea, where office jobs at conglomerates are seen not only as symbols of financial stability but also of elite status.

But amid the semiconductor boom and its accompanying hefty bonuses, some people are abandoning four-year universities to enroll in vocational colleges, a path that often leads to the production site. The number of these cases reached a record 2,500 this year, up 23 percent from a year earlier, according to Korean Council for University College Education.

The changing perception is increasingly reflected in the applicant pool.

“Even job seekers from four-year universities are seriously considering applying for production-line positions at SK hynix, which shows how much the applicant pool has broadened,” said a career consultant who worked at the chipmaker until last year and now reportedly handles around 1,000 consulting cases annually. He explained he is seeing applicants from “completely unrelated fields,” including people with “little to no basic knowledge” of semiconductors applying for blue-collar work in the industry.

The sentiment is also felt on the ground.

“I work on the production line at SK hynix, and life is sweet,” wrote a user on an anonymous workplace community. Describing himself as a factory worker in his 20s, he said he landed the job straight out of vocational high school and called it “the best value-for-money career path.”

The rapid advance of AI in the workplace is further accelerating the change in attitude, as generative AI raises fears that many routine white-collar tasks — from data analysis to document drafting — could increasingly be automated, a trend already being aggressively pursued by U.S. tech giants such as Meta Platforms and Amazon.

“This semiconductor windfall has accelerated a shift away from university credentialism,” said Seo Yong-gu, a business professor at Sookmyung Women’s University. “Just as gender discrimination has diminished, the gap between manual and office work is narrowing.”

Cracks in Korea’s academic credentialism

Korea’s highly competitive social order has long revolved around university rankings, which often determined access to prestigious corporate jobs. But eye-popping bonuses in the semiconductor industry are blurring the line between white- and blue-collar work and shifting the focus toward industry rather than job type.

The shift comes as the semiconductor upcycle could present employees at SK hynix with an average of about 800 million won ($540,000) in performance bonuses early next year while chip division staff at Samsung Electronics are expected to receive roughly 600 million won per person on average.

Although actual payouts for white- and blue-collar employees may differ, as compensation is tied to base salaries, bonus payout ratios are the same across all employees at SK hynix while the ratio slightly varies at Samsung Electronics’ chip division by the types of chip business. Even after accounting for those differences, average bonuses itself could far exceed the average annual income of 74 million won for workers at conglomerates, including bonuses, as of last year, according to data from Korea Enterprises Federation.

Until now, white-collar jobs in Korea have been preferred because they offered stable employment and predictable income streams — a reliable path to the middle class — while an abundant labor supply in the past kept production wages from exceeding those of office jobs, according to Song Heon-jae, an economics professor at the University of Seoul.

“But upward pressure on blue-collar wages from demographic-driven labor shortages, together with this year’s semiconductor bonus windfalls, has prompted a reassessment by showing that production-line workers — not traditionally part of the professional elite — can earn large compensation outside the credentialed professions,” Song said.

Despite strong export performance, manufacturing employment has declined for 22 consecutive months through April, falling by 55,000 from a year earlier, according to the government data. For manufacturing firms with 300 or more employees, the average monthly total wages of regular workers reached 8.3 million won in 2025, up 6.9 percent from a year earlier.

“If similar booms extend to industries such as shipbuilding and biotechnology, the revaluation of blue-collar work could broaden further across the economy and ultimately lead to changes in the college admissions system [that favor white-collar jobs], long resistant to reform due to parental influence,” he added.

This reassessment of pay structures is being reflected among young job seekers.

A recent survey of 1,800 Gen Z job seekers, born between 1997 and 2012, found that 60 percent preferred a 70 million won production job with shift work over a 30 million won office job without overtime, according to job platform Catch, showing that the prestige of white-collar jobs does not outweigh compensation and hours. The share favoring production roles rose 2 percentage points on-year. Perceptions of blue-collar jobs are also turning more positive, with 68 percent of respondents viewing blue-collar work favorably, up 5 percentage points from a year earlier, driven largely by higher pay.

A book on passing the SK hynix admission exam is displayed at a large bookstore in central Seoul on April 16. As the semiconductor industry benefits from the AI boom, interest in employment at chip companies has heated up the market for related study materials. [NEWS1]

AI-driven fears

The rapid adoption of AI in corporate workplaces is further eroding once-dominant white-collar roles, as companies worldwide cut corporate headcounts at scale while increasingly emphasizing the value of manual labor.

Meta Platforms started reducing its workforce by about 10 percent, or around 8,000 jobs, starting mid-May, with more layoffs expected this year, while Amazon confirmed 16,000 corporate job cuts in January.
Corporate executives are also increasingly acknowledging the growing importance of manual labor. During a commencement speech at Carnegie Mellon University in May, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang told students that “electricians, plumbers, iron workers, technicians, builders — this is your time.” Tesla billionaire Elon Musk, who has repeatedly argued university education is overrated, said on the Moonshots podcast in January that even with AI at its current state, society is already “pretty close” to replacing “half of” white-collar jobs.

Similar findings were reported by the Bank of Korea, which said in a November 2025 report that youth employment in white-collar jobs like information services, publishing and professional services declined by 23.8 percent, 20.4 percent and 8.8 percent, respectively, over the three years since November 2022.

Other data suggest AI is having a more direct impact on white-collar jobs than on manufacturing roles in Korea. While 65.4 percent of nonmanufacturing companies have adopted AI in the workplace, only 42.6 percent of manufacturing had done so, according to a 2025 Korea Labor Institute survey of corporate executives.

As concerns over shrinking corporate job opportunities grow, resistance to AI is also mounting. Hyundai Motor’s labor union earlier this year opposed the automaker’s plan to deploy Boston Dynamics’ AI-powered humanoid robot Atlas in manufacturing facilities, while the National Health Insurance Service’s call-center union protested the adoption of AI counselors, according to a local media report in March.

Samsung Electronics' Pyeongtaek chip cluster in Gyeonggi [PYEONGTAEK CITY]

The anxiety is also increasingly visible abroad, particularly among young job seekers. Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt was booed by students when he spoke about the rise of AI during his address at the University of Arizona’s graduation ceremony earlier this May. Similar sentiment was evident at the University of Central Florida earlier this month, when Gloria Caulfield, vice president of strategic alliances at Tavistock Development Company, mentioned that the rise of AI is “the next industrial revolution.”

“Simple repetitive tasks are increasingly being replaced by robots, but blue-collar workers — particularly skilled manufacturing technicians — are likely to be less exposed to AI-related job threats than office workers, whose roles in report writing and analysis are increasingly performed by AI,” said Won Chae-hwan. a business professor at Sogang University. “Even within white-collar jobs, however, roles that require human judgment and emotional intelligence, such as personnel evaluations and customer service, will be difficult to replace with AI.”

BY JIN MIN-JI [[email protected]]