Government drops 'excess profit' language, but petition against chipmaker policy nears 17,000 signatures

The government has moved to dial back its public debate on redistributing "excess profits" from chipmakers by stripping the contentious phrase from official materials, but a citizen petition demanding the policy be scrapped is spreading rapidly.

Signatories to the petition have nearly reached 17,000, and an additional 33,022 signatures are needed to hit the 50,000 threshold required for a formal National Assembly committee review.

According to the National Assembly's public petition platform, the petition — which calls for a halt to the review of a semiconductor excess-profit clawback policy and the withdrawal of measures seen as undermining corporate competitiveness — had drawn 16,978 signatures as of Sunday morning. Support surpassed 10,000 in just five days since the petition was posted on Tuesday.

Under National Assembly rules, a petition that gathers 50,000 or more signatures within 30 days of posting is referred to the relevant standing committee for official review. At the current pace, the petition still needs 33,022 more signatures to reach that threshold.

The petitioner argued that the semiconductor industry is "a core national industry requiring enormous research and development and facility investment," warning that policies aimed at clawing back corporate earnings "could dampen investment incentives and undermine the principles of a market economy." The petitioner called for the government to abandon the excess-profit clawback discussion and shift instead toward policies that support expanded corporate investment, research and development, and job creation.

Ahead of the forum scheduled for Tuesday, the government made sweeping changes to the language surrounding the event.

The forum's name, which had originally carried a strong connotation of public deliberation on excess-profit redistribution, was changed to "A New Path for Social Innovation in Step with AI Technological Innovation."

The discussion topics were also revised to drop the phrases "excess profit redistribution" and "social solidarity wage," with the agenda now centered on corporate innovation investment in the era of AI-driven industrial transformation, cooperation between large companies and their subcontractors, and expansion of the social safety net.

Earlier, Employment and Labor Minister Kim Young-hoon had proposed in May opening a public debate on the social redistribution of large corporations' excess profits and the possibility of a "Korean-style social solidarity wage." The ministry, however, has maintained that excess-profit redistribution is not the forum's central agenda, describing the event as a broad discussion covering innovation investment and the social safety net, among other policy areas.

Business community observers remain skeptical, with many suggesting the government is simply rebranding the event while still intending to pursue discussions on how corporations' excess profits could be put to social use. An official from the Korea Employers Federation said the organization had asked the Ministry of Employment and Labor about the scope of the discussion topics, only to be told "the scope has not been defined," adding that the forum was understood to be "a format where participants can freely share their views on social innovation in the AI era."