Less than 5% of the South Korean Headquarters? SK Hynix's AI Rush, Chinese Employees Revealed to Miss Out on ¥3 Million Annual Bonus

According to 动察 Beating monitoring, driven by the skyrocketing demand for AI storage, SK Hynix has repeatedly achieved record profits this year. Previously, based on its 10% profit sharing rule, Korean employees were expected to receive a sky-high year-end bonus of over 3 million RMB. However, several Chinese employees have recently revealed that there is a significant disparity in treatment between the Chinese and Korean branches: if the Korean headquarters distributes 3 million, Chinese employees would not even receive 5% of that amount as a bonus.

This stark gap stems from differences in the underlying salary structure. Bonuses at the Korean headquarters are based on a high base salary for all 12 months of the year; whereas in the Chinese branch, not only is the base salary much lower, but there are no stock or similar incentives at all. A Chinese tech core member with over 10 years of tenure stated that his highest bonus during his peak performance was just over 100,000, and during the industry downturn in 2023, the bonus directly hit zero.

In addition to missing out on the AI wealth creation bonus, another major pain point is the glass ceiling in the workplace. The aforementioned employees emphasized that the company's management team is almost entirely monopolized by Koreans, stating, "Chinese people cannot be part of the management team." Several former employees also admitted that the Korean storage giant basically views the Chinese branch as a mere processing plant or sales office, and the distribution of core profits has nothing to do with mainland employees.