Lee Jae-yong

Money Moves

Committing Samsung to new southwest fabs

South Korea's chip buildout is producing contracts on several fronts. On November 2, Industry Minister Kim Jung-kwan said the three mega projects total 1,600 trillion won, about 60% of GDP in the year work starts, and promised faster permits to bring fab start-ups forward by more than two years. Samsung and SK Hynix have signed long-term memory supply deals with customers, and OpenAI's Sam Altman visited Seoul to talk with SK Group about HBM and data centers.

Updated Nov 2

Money Moves

As of May 2026: Signed off on the profit-sharing pledge

Samsung Electronics has run for 57 years without ever tying a fixed share of profits to worker pay. That changed Wednesday.

Updated May 27