SK Hynix drops educational requirements, South Korean youth rush toward a new narrow path

Text | Sleepy

On June 17th, SK Hynix released a recruitment announcement. Chip design, devices, R&D—previously only core technical positions requiring at least a bachelor's degree, from that day onward, all educational requirements were removed. High school graduates who want to do R&D can now apply. This round of recruitment is over a hundred people, deadline June 23rd. The educational restriction for production positions will also be adjusted in the future.

In a country that has spent seventy years betting its fate on the word "diploma," the top-ranked company says diplomas are useless.

According to Korea Herald, this company ranked first for the first time in the 2025 list of most desired companies among Korean university students.

The reason is simple: SK Hynix pays too much. Last September, they signed an agreement with the union, allocating 10% of annual operating profit for bonuses, with no cap. In 2025, profit is 47 trillion won, and year-end bonuses amounted to 2,964% of monthly salary. Ordinary employees take home about 700,000 RMB. In the first quarter of 2026, profit margin is 72%, higher than Nvidia. If this trend continues throughout the year, the average bonus could exceed three million RMB.

SK Hynix employees in Korea's matchmaking market are now on par with doctors, lawyers, and other traditional high-income professions. Matchmaking companies tell the media that since the semiconductor supercycle began, engineers earning far more than expected are now more popular than lawyers.

Korea Herald reported a detail: Someone listed a SK Hynix union vest on secondhand platform Karrot, priced at 40,000 won, with the description "matchmaking combat gear." The post quickly went viral.

There’s a popular joke circulating: When SK Hynix employees go on dates, they humbly say they work at Samsung. Only if they meet a good-hearted partner do they reveal they actually work at Hynix.

Samsung is really bleeding. Over four months, at least 200 engineers jumped ship to Hynix. Those who left said their income tripled. Samsung union leader told reporters this figure, looking unhappy, because Samsung can't match those wages. Samsung is too big; its semiconductor profits are huge, yet its smartphones and home appliances still lose money in the same quarter.

When SK Hynix announced the removal of educational requirements, they offered an explanation: In the AI era, education alone isn't enough; creativity and potential matter more. SK Group Chairman Choi Tae-yoon mentioned three words: thinking ability, adaptability, and empathy.

All good words.

A Seven-Decade-Old Single Log Bridge

Korea is the most extreme country in the world when it comes to the importance of "diplomas." OECD statistics show that 71% of Koreans aged 25 to 34 have a university degree—the highest in the world. On exam day, flight routes are adjusted, stock markets delay opening, police escort late students. It’s not because Koreans revere knowledge more; a university acceptance letter in Korea is almost equivalent to a visa, a ticket from the bottom to the middle class.

Without it, you can't go anywhere. With it, at least you can queue.

How did this visa become so important? We need to look back sixty or seventy years.

During Park Chung-hee’s era, Korea tied its entire economic lifeline to a few chaebols. Samsung, Hyundai, LG, SK—they held the most profitable businesses, paid the highest wages, and offered the most stable jobs. Small and medium enterprises paid about 60% of what chaebols did. 81% of the workforce worked in SMEs, but everyone’s eyes were fixed on the chaebols’ less than 1% share. In Korea, a graduate’s first job essentially determines their lifetime income.

How to get into a chaebol? A university diploma, a good university diploma.

The entire country's families started pushing along this path. The Bank of Korea did a study: for students with similar talent, parents’ economic strength influences admission chances to prestigious schools by up to 75%. One-third of Seoul National University freshmen come from Seoul; just the Gangnam district accounts for 12%.

Korean youth have created a self-deprecating phrase called the "Spoon Theory." Those with assets over 2 billion won are called "Gold Spoons," under 50 million are "Dirt Spoons." About 70-80% of Koreans feel that upward mobility is no longer relevant to them.

Someone shared online about their family. Basically, my mom runs a small restaurant, works tirelessly for ten years, saving enough for my college tuition. I attended an obscure university outside Seoul, liberal arts. Now I work as a waiter in a café, earning 1.8 million won a month. My sister is about to graduate high school, and I told her not to go to college, learn a skill instead. But my mom disagrees. She says it’s because we’re uneducated that we live like this.

In small towns across Korea, such families are everywhere.

In towns in Chungcheong, Gyeongsang, and Jeolla provinces, tutoring centers stay open until 11 pm. Outside, the streets are deserted; even convenience store clerks are dozing off. 16-17-year-olds walking home only know Seoul through their phone screens. Parents send tens of thousands of won monthly to tutoring centers—an expense for families running small restaurants or fried chicken shops. But they still send their kids, because without it, they can’t even qualify to queue on the single-log bridge.

Koreans joke about the "Fried Chicken Conjecture." No matter what you do—programmer, architect, engineer—most will end up as fried chicken shop owners. Because the chaebols’ traps are many; those who can’t get in will eventually fall out, ending up in the same place. Town youth resonate most with this conjecture, as they are the furthest from the trap and fall fastest.

Someone once said, living in Seoul is the hell they can imagine. But what if they don’t go to Seoul? Local job markets are even quieter than hell—so quiet that even hell seems lively.

So they still go. Push into Seoul, live in exam rooms—rooms no bigger than a bed, with thin partitions that can hear neighbors turning over, and communal bathrooms at the corridor’s end. During the day, attend classes or prepare for interviews; at night, memorize TOEIC words under a desk lamp. Young people aged 23-24 live in 4-square-meter cubicles, just to earn a ticket to work at a big company. Education, English scores, certifications, internships, volunteer activities—Koreans call this whole set of things "specs," just like attribute points in a game, each item requiring time and money to upgrade.

In the 70s and 80s, mom was right. Society was like an elevator; diplomas were elevator tickets—buy one, and you go up.

But the elevator has been stopped for a long time.

When 71% of young people hold university degrees, diplomas no longer prove competence; they only prove you haven't hit rock bottom. Everyone has one; it’s almost as if no one has. What truly filters people are the extras attached to the diploma: overseas exchange programs, extracurricular competitions, networking, interview training classes—all bought with money.

Reaching this point on the single-log bridge, the surface is children, but underneath, it’s family wealth.

The dismantlers stand at the other end of the bridge

SK Hynix says, no need to cross the bridge anymore. High school graduates can now do chip R&D. Focus on ability, not paper.

I try to think about this from another angle.

If diplomas are no longer important, then what is? The company mentions several words: growth potential, creative problem-solving ability, cultural fit.

Gaokao scores are black and white, a standard across the country. You can question this standard’s brutality, but it’s unavoidable. "Growth potential" isn’t something you can see; it’s shaped by the interviewer. "Cultural fit" is even more vague—it can be anything, or nothing at all.

A high school graduate from a small town sits at SK Hynix’s interview table in Yichuan Park, Cheonan. He grew up in a small city in North Gyeongsang Province, three hours from Seoul. His high school has no semiconductor labs, no coding clubs; books about chips might be ten years old. He’s smart, but no one has ever shown him what a wafer looks like.

Now, the person across the table needs to judge whether he has "flexible thinking" within an hour. This judgment depends on how he speaks, his problem-solving posture, and a certain temperament shown in conversation. These are related to talent, but more so to the environment he grew up in, what books he read, whom he met, where he traveled, and whether someone taught him how to clearly express his ideas to strangers.

And the interview prep classes in Dache-dong, Gangnam, Seoul, won’t close—they’ll just change their curriculum. Business isn’t affected; it might even improve.

Old rules are rigid but clear. Scores are final; no one dares to reject you face-to-face without reason. New rules are soft, polite, and full of good intentions. But the softer the ruler, the easier it bends—and which way it bends depends on who holds it.

That mother who ran a restaurant for ten years to pay for her daughter’s college. She only has one card—her diploma. Not because that paper is magical, but because in this game, it’s the only one she can afford.

Children in Gangnam don’t rely on that card. They start coding in elementary school, go to Silicon Valley during summer, and their extracurricular activities fill three pages. It doesn’t matter if they have a diploma or not. For some, that card is everything; for others, it’s just a decoration with no real value.

The game has changed. The first card removed from the table is precisely the one the poor can’t afford.

A New Single Log Bridge

SK Hynix’s removal of educational requirements, judged by recruitment efficiency, is a good thing. They are in their best year ever, with HBM orders booked two years ahead, urgently needing capable workers. If a high school graduate can truly do chip design, the rules blocking him make no sense.

But SK Hynix is Korea’s top choice for university students. Their statement that diplomas don’t matter will spread beyond campus walls into every cram school. Every high school student still studying under a lamp will have a moment of doubt.

Korea already has semiconductor vocational high schools. One called "Korea Semiconductor Craftsman High School" recently held its first admissions fair, packed with applicants. Graduating in three years and entering Hynix’s production line could earn in a year what a father makes in a lifetime.

In the same month, Korea’s Statistics Office reported that employment in May decreased by 40,000 year-over-year—the first negative growth in seventeen months. Manufacturing employment has declined for 23 consecutive months. Only semiconductors are rising; all other industries are falling.

A new single log bridge has been built. But this time, the other end doesn’t lead to university; it leads to a company.

Universities still offer hundreds of choices, thousands of majors, and diverse directions. If the next generation’s entire gamble shifts from "getting into a good university" to "joining a good company," they are still gambling—just with a different dealer.

Hynix says they no longer care about diplomas; Samsung’s 40,000 workers are striking for better pay. These two issues combined are one. It’s not a reform of the education system; it’s money so fierce that even profit-hindering rules must give way. Rules follow money.

That river has always been there. Over decades, several bridges have crossed it: imperial exams, college entrance exams, university diplomas—now replaced by "comprehensive quality assessments."

That river is the wage gap between chaebols and small companies, the resource gap between Seoul and the provinces, the line between the "Gold Spoons" and "Dirt Spoons," welded at birth.

Ryu Mi-ri wrote about a man in "Park Ueno Station." He came down from Fukushima to Tokyo to build the 1964 Olympics venues. Working hard, sending money home, never complaining, doing everything asked. When the venues were finished, Tokyo no longer needed him. He ended up sleeping on a bench in Ueno Park, beside the stadium he helped build. People walk by, take photos—no one notices him.

He did nothing wrong. It’s just that what he did was no longer needed the day after it was done.

While reading this book, I kept thinking of that mother running the small restaurant. She must have seen SK Hynix’s news today.

I guess she won’t change her mind; her daughter will still go to college.

Not because she doesn’t understand. But because even if she does, she dares not admit it. If she admits it, the past ten years were all for nothing. Those tireless days, those days splitting every penny of profit in half, those days working through a fever without closing—were all for her daughter to get that piece of paper. If that paper really doesn’t matter, then what were all those efforts for?

So she will keep supporting, keep saving, keep sending money to cram schools. Her daughter will eventually live in that four-square-meter cubicle in the exam room, too.

Reference materials

[1] Every SK hynix employee could receive $477,000 bonuses this year, almost $900,000 next year, Tom’s Hardware

[2] Samsung and SK Hynix employees are reportedly abandoning overseas training programs, Tom’s Hardware

[3] SK Hynix Posts Record Quarterly Results Amid AI Boom, The Wall Street Journal

[4] Memory-chip maker triples revenue and says demand to outstrip supply for at least three more years, MarketWatch

[5] Nvidia supplier SK Hynix hails ‘structural shift’ after another record quarter, Financial Times

[6] Memory chip specialist SK Hynix reports record-breaking profits, PC Gamer

[7] Samsung narrowly avoids 18-day chip strike after last-minute wage deal, Tom’s Hardware

[8] Nvidia no longer reports gaming GPU sales as a separate segment, Tom’s Hardware

[9] Education GPS - Korea, OECD

[10] Why S. Korea’s Crackdown on Private Tutoring Is Just a ‘Band-Aid’ on a Much Larger Problem, TIME

[11] What Are Chaebol Structures in South Korea?, Investopedia

[12] Beef With Billionaires: Everything You Need to Know About South Korean Chaebols, Vanity Fair

[13] ‘Spoon class theory’ gains force in Korea, The Korea Times

[14] No money, no hope: South Korea’s ‘Dirt Spoons’ turn against Moon, Reuters

[15] How did Gangnam become the Seoul epicenter it is today?, Korea JoongAng Daily

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