South Korea's dispute over operating-profit-linked bonuses is widening from company bargaining into a legislative and regulatory fight over who should control profit-based bonus pools: labor and management, boards, or shareholders. South Korea's industry minister Kim Jung-kwan said on August 6 that bonuses tied to operating profit should at least require board or shareholder approval, while the government is discussing revisions to the Commercial Act and Capital Markets Act that could require a shareholder vote on large payouts. Shareholder groups have backed a binding framework for defining the scope of labor disputes and argue that fixed-percentage bonus formulas based on accounting metrics such as operating profit, net income or economic value added, or EVA (profit after cost of capital), are profit appropriation decisions rather than working conditions, citing a January Supreme Court ruling on excess profit incentive payments, or OPI (bonus tied to excess profits). Labor federations say the operating-profit N% rule remains a legitimate subject for bargaining over compensation and oppose any attempt to narrow labor-dispute scope through administrative guidelines or enforcement rules. With legal precedent still unclear, the fight is increasingly centered less on the size of bonuses than on which institution should have final authority over how company profits are distributed.