The South Korean Minimum Wage Commission recently approved the 2027 minimum wage plan, which will take effect on January 1, 2027. The new hourly minimum wage is set at 10,700 South Korean won, equivalent to nearly 50 Chinese yuan, representing an overall increase of 3.7% compared to this year's standard, exceeding the previous expectations of many market institutions.

Salary increases outpace inflation, leading to a sharp increase in pressure on small businesses

This salary increase exceeds the official 2026 CPI inflation forecast of 2.7% in South Korea. Many small business groups have publicly warned that the continuously rising minimum wage standard will significantly increase labor costs for small merchants and individual businesses, greatly increasing the operational pressure on many small and medium-sized enterprises with weak risk resistance. According to the current monthly standard working hours of 209 hours in South Korea, the corresponding monthly minimum wage reaches 2.2363 million South Korean won, equivalent to more than 10,000 Chinese yuan, directly raising the income threshold for basic workers to a new level.

The boom of the AI industry becomes the underlying logic for the wage adjustment

South Korean economists publicly explained the underlying logic of this adjustment: as the global AI industry enters a period of rapid growth, the income of local semiconductor and storage industry workers has also risen along with the industry's benefits. If the minimum wage is not adjusted to narrow the income gap across industries, ordinary service and blue-collar workers would not feel the social benefits brought by the AI industry boom, but instead further widen the income gap between different industries, intensifying social distribution conflicts.

This policy essentially aims to redistribute part of the AI industry's benefits to grassroots workers through institutional means, attempting to alleviate structural income disparities caused by technological changes.