The job map is being redrawn. As major domestic groups accelerate restructuring by cutting low-profit businesses and shifting resources to semiconductors, artificial intelligence, robots, and defense, jobs are moving along with industry.
According to the business community on the 28th, the restructuring by major groups is expanding beyond asset sales to include organizational changes and workforce reallocation. Analysts say that amid high interest rates, geopolitical crises, and the competition for AI investment, the trend has become one of building a leaner structure centered on core businesses rather than expanding scale.
Whenever companies redraw the board, the location and nature of jobs also change. Following the three paths of movement – which jobs are increasing, which regions are growing, and which countries investment is flowing into – reveals a changed map.
Samsung Electronics has established a new “RX Business Promotion Office” directly under the CEO to nurture robotics into a growth engine on par with semiconductors. Robotics personnel scattered across various organizations are being gathered at the R&D campus in Umyeon-dong, Seoul, and a data factory for creating training data for robots will be built at the Gumi plant.
Samsung also brought in Vice President Lee Dong-geon, who led Boston Dynamics strategy at Hyundai Motor Group, as head of the Robotics Strategy Team. Organizational creation, site relocation, and outside recruitment are being carried out as a package.
Workforce moves are also underway within semiconductors. Samsung Electronics has opened an internal voluntary application system for about 500 employees in its low-profit power semiconductor (CSS) business team and has begun procedures to reassign them to memory and foundry businesses. Those transferred will be placed under the incentive system of the growth divisions, indicating that business prospects and compensation are jointly driving the moves.
Overseas investment is also being pursued in parallel. It is a way of buying talent and technology wholesale. According to the Financial Times, Samsung is discussing an investment of about 1 billion euros, or roughly 1.7 trillion won, in French AI company Mistral AI.
SK Group has steadily slimmed down its affiliates by selling 11st, Woori Store, stakes in SK Shieldus, and SK Rent-a-Car. Its electric vehicle charger subsidiary SK Signet is also pursuing a plan to delist after a tender offer at 8,200 won per share, then be sold.
The sale of semiconductor materials company SK Siltron has become a more difficult issue. Although DuSan was selected as the preferred negotiator last December, questions have continued to surface about whether it is right to sell a core materials company, as its estimated value has risen from 4 trillion to 5 trillion won to as much as 7 trillion won amid the AI-driven memory boom.
Given that Chairman Chey Tae-won described the surge in semiconductor demand as “chaos” and said memory production capacity would be doubled within five years, the dilemma between pushing ahead with the sale and withdrawing from it has become even greater.
Hyundai Motor Group and Hanwha are moving in the same direction. They may wear different nameplates – robotics and defense – but the formula is identical: reduce non-core businesses and strengthen future growth areas. Chairman Chung Euisun recently said at a U.S. AI summit that the group is seeking to transform itself into a “physical AI solutions company” encompassing autonomous driving, robotics, and AI factories. It is a declaration that it wants to become a company that sells embodied AI rather than a carmaker, with Boston Dynamics, Nvidia, and Waymo forming the core of the cooperation.
Hanwha is building a maritime defense axis by acquiring stakes in the U.S. Philly Shipyard and Australia’s Austal, and is even buying shares in Korea Aerospace Industries (KAI), while Hanwha Solutions, whose solar and chemicals businesses have been hit by the downturn, is selling assets to improve its financial structure. The contrast between businesses being expanded and those being reduced is becoming the contrast in employment as well.
Mid-sized groups are also joining the trend. LG CNS joined a collaborative AI materials development network involving 48 companies including Nvidia and Meta as Korea’s representative IT company. Doosan Robotics is accelerating its transition into a robotics solutions company, with second-quarter sales jumping 290 percent from a year earlier thanks to the effect of U.S. automation company OneXia, which it acquired last year.
First, jobs are moving by occupation. Skilled workers from low-profit businesses are shifting into semiconductors, robotics, and AI divisions. Since it takes years to train and deploy workers through new hiring, companies are speeding things up through internal reallocation and experienced hiring.
As major groups have also scrapped open recruitment and established rolling and experienced hiring, the market is solidifying in a way that favors proven experienced workers over new job seekers. Some say this creates opportunity for those moving into growth areas, but also narrows the entry path for young people seeking their first jobs.
The global outlook points in the same direction. The World Economic Forum’s Future of Jobs Report predicted that by 2030, 170 million jobs will be created and 92 million will disappear, for a net gain of 78 million.
Total employment increases, but the content is the problem. AI specialists and data-related roles are expected to grow rapidly, while jobs such as administrative support and graphic design are expected to shrink. The report also says that 39 percent of current job skills will become outdated by 2030.
It is a sweeping change in which 22 percent of global employment will be newly created or replaced, and demand is also expected to rise in fields that seem far removed from technology, such as care, education, and renewable energy.
The regional map is being redrawn as well. Hyundai Motor Group plans to create an “AI Valley” in Saemangeum that combines robot manufacturing and AI application centers, while investing 125 trillion won in Korea by 2030. Samsung’s Gumi data factory and the Umyeon-dong robotics R&D base are part of the same trend.
As the industrial map is redrawn, cities that attract talent and cities that lose it will diverge. With R&D concentrated in the capital region and production bases being reorganized in the provinces, regional employment patterns could be shaken. There are also concerns that the locations of semiconductor, defense, and shipbuilding hubs will even alter the migration paths of young people.
The center of gravity is also shifting beyond national borders. According to a report by the Financial Times citing Ministry of Economy and Finance data, Korean companies’ direct investment in the United States in the first quarter of this year reached $10.2 billion, more than double the same period a year earlier and the highest in about five years.
For all of last year, the figure was $25.7 billion. Access to the U.S. market and pressure to reorganize supply chains are cited as the main reasons drawing investment overseas. Hyundai Motor Group alone plans to invest $26 billion in the United States.
Goldman Sachs said AI is changing the shape of global mergers and acquisitions, with Korea at the center of Asia, while JPMorgan analyzed that Korean companies’ M&A in the United States is becoming larger in scale.
As the center of gravity in production and investment shifts toward the United States, concerns are being raised that domestic manufacturing jobs could be left with gaps, while others argue that high-value R&D jobs will concentrate at headquarters.
Even if overseas factories increase, if high-value functions such as design, planning, and data management remain in Korea, the quality of employment could actually improve. Which functions stay and which leave is seen as more important than the investment amount itself.
The consensus is that the movement itself cannot be stopped. The question is who bears the cost of that movement. To move from vanishing jobs to newly created ones requires skills, time, and money. Each step – such as a power semiconductor engineer moving into memory process work or solar workers shifting to defense facilities – is part of the transition cost.
The WEF pointed out that by 2030, 59 percent of workers worldwide will need retraining or upskilling, but 11 percent are likely not to receive the education they need. It is a warning that gaps in educational opportunity could directly become gaps in employment.
At the company level, internal reassignment is seen as one bridge. A system like Samsung Electronics’ voluntary application program, where employees apply and business units review the candidates, creates less friction than unilateral reassignment and allows skilled workers to be deployed in growth divisions without layoffs. According to the WEF survey, 85 percent of companies said strengthening the skills of existing employees is a priority.
Seventy percent of surveyed companies said they will also recruit talent with new skills, suggesting an employment market in which retraining and external hiring will run in parallel. The idea is spreading that retraining and moving workers is better than laying them off and hiring anew, both in terms of cost and organizational stability.
The government’s role is also being discussed. For new hubs such as the Saemangeum AI Valley to translate into actual local jobs, residential conditions, education, and other settlement infrastructure must follow. Industrial and employment policies that distinguish between functions that stay in Korea and those that move abroad in response to expanding U.S. investment, along with transition training and employment insurance as a safety net during job changes, are also being cited as tasks.
Reducing the “11 percent” who cannot receive education, as warned by the WEF, is seen as a public responsibility rather than one for individual companies. Policy must bridge the paradox that those in disappearing jobs often have the hardest access to retraining.
There are also specific practical steps for preparation. On an individual level, many advise starting by applying AI tools to the work one is already doing.
By automating repetitive tasks first – such as drafting reports, organizing data, and making design outlines – it becomes clearer which jobs will be replaced and which tasks will remain human responsibilities. The ability to assign work to AI and verify the results is itself becoming a new job skill.
There are also calls to change the way careers are planned. Instead of staying in one company and one role, workers should build adjacent skills in advance so they can move when industries are reorganized. The reason power semiconductor employees were able to move into memory process work was that they shared a semiconductor foundation. Using retraining programs such as public vocational training and the National Tomorrow Learning Card while still employed is considered better than searching after becoming unemployed.
Companies and universities are also being urged to act. Firms are being asked to guarantee transition training periods for those selected for reassignment and to disclose job transition paths in advance. Universities are being asked to adjust quotas and curricula that are misaligned with industrial demand. Since companies are the first to know which jobs are shrinking and which skills are needed, quickly feeding that information into the labor market and educational institutions is seen as the fastest way to reduce transition costs.
What remains for individuals is continuous learning. The WEF report identifies the ability to learn new technologies, problem-solving, and understanding of AI and data as the capabilities that will be in greater demand in the future.
This is an era in which portable skills, rather than job-bound skills, serve as the safety net of employment. The restructuring of business by the business community and the outlook for the global labor market point to the same conclusion.
When the map changes, those at an advantage are not the people who already have good positions, but those who are prepared to move. That is the conclusion running through the report, and the restructuring experiments by major groups are becoming the first stage for testing that proposition in Korea’s labor market.
