Industry insiders revealed that Samsung Electronics Digital Solutions (DS) and SK Hynix decided to pay high performance bonuses to employees in the case of a sharp decline in the memory semiconductor business.

According to Business Korea, although the profit of the DS department of Samsung Electronics in 2022 decreased 26.3% to 23.82 trillion won year on year, the employees of the department received the performance award (OPI) equivalent to 50% of the annual salary in January. Maintain the same level as the previous year. In addition to the memory department, the same OPI ratio applies to employees of Samsung Electronics OEM department and system LSI department.

SK Hynix determined the excess profit distribution (PS) of last year's operating performance as 820% of the standard salary and paid it to employees before February 3. The standard salary of 820% is 41% of the annual salary. SK Hynix started from 2021, with 10% of the operating profit of the previous year as the financial source, linking personal performance, etc., and paying PS.

The report pointed out that the reason why the two companies paid huge performance bonuses even in the economic downturn was that they took a certain proportion of operating profits as the source of performance bonuses. According to industry analysis, this is to prevent excellent employees from job-hopping and shake and instability within the company.