South Korea’s Minister of Employment and Labor Kim Young-hoon said strikes seeking performance pay equal to a percentage of operating profit would be illegal under recently issued enforcement guidelines for the Yellow Envelope Act. The guidelines distinguish voluntary negotiations from mandatory bargaining and industrial action, citing potential effects on shareholders, the state and corporate management decisions. They are not retroactive, so existing performance-pay agreements at Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix remain valid. Kim said the policy was intended partly to avoid misunderstandings among foreign investors and protect investment and corporate competitiveness. He also expressed caution about broad white-collar exemptions from working-hour rules and said a proposal to extend unemployment benefits to voluntarily resigning people under 35 was excluded from next year’s budget because of concerns about side effects.