SK Hynix said average first-half pay per employee rose 23% to 144 million won from 117 million won a year earlier, while its August 14 semiannual report also showed a sharp rise in investment tied to AI memory expansion. The company spent 18.33 trillion won on property, plant and equipment in the January-June period, up 72.7% from 10.62 trillion won a year earlier, and nearly doubled R&D spending to 6.04 trillion won from 3.05 trillion won. Of the R&D total, 5.82 trillion won was booked as current development expense. The spending push reflects strong demand for high-bandwidth memory, server DRAM and enterprise solid-state drives, areas where SK Hynix has built a leading position. Its flagship expansion project is the Yongin semiconductor cluster, planned to house four next-generation DRAM and AI memory fabs. The first fab is targeting an initial cleanroom opening in February 2027, and in February the company said it would add 21.6 trillion won by 2030 for that site, bringing total investment there to about 31 trillion won including an existing 9.4 trillion won construction plan. On August 7, SK Hynix's board approved 54.3 trillion won in new fab investments, including 35.2 trillion won for the Y2 fab at Yongin and 19.1 trillion won for the M17 NAND fab in Cheongju. Y2 is scheduled to break ground in July 2027 with a first cleanroom target of June 2029, while M17 is set for groundbreaking in February 2027 and a first cleanroom target of December 2028. The projects form part of a 1,100 trillion won mid- to long-term investment roadmap unveiled in June, under which the company plans to invest 600 trillion won in Yongin, 100 trillion won in Cheongju and 400 trillion won in the southwestern region. SK Hynix also moved up the first cleanroom target for the fourth Yongin fab to 2033 from the original 2045, highlighting how AI-driven demand is speeding up semiconductor capacity expansion. The earlier compensation disclosure remained unchanged. CEO Kwak Noh-jung received 26.095 billion won in first-half compensation and Chief Technology Officer Cha Sun-yong received 10.94 billion won, with the company saying the jump reflected long-term performance incentives set in the past and stock-based compensation lifted by its share price during the AI boom. In separate South Korean half-year filings released the same day, telecom operators also tied executive pay and business updates to AI transformation and data center growth.