The human cost of South Korea's AI chip boom

SOUTH Korean activists campaigning for workplace safety in the nation's booming semiconductor industry are calling on the government to recognise the cancer diagnoses of three former SK Hynix employees as work-related illnesses.

SK Hynix, along with fellow South Korean tech giant Samsung Electronics, has emerged as a key player in the booming artificial intelligence industry, with its cutting-edge memory chips crucial to powering the sector's rapid growth.

Establishing direct links between semiconductor work and certain cancers can be contentious, with research inconclusive.

But fabrication and assembly plant workers can face exposure to solvents, acids, toxic metals and chemical gases, according to the United States Occupational Safety and Health Administration.

Samsung issued a public apology in 2018 to workers, many of them young women, who had developed cancer after working at some of its factories, paying out 150 million won per case after a decade-long dispute.

Supporters for the Health and Rights of People in the Semiconductor Industry (SHARPS), one of the groups that had pressured Samsung, said chemicals classified as carcinogens were being used by SK Hynix.

"We have confirmed that several substances on SK Hynix's own list of prohibited chemicals are in fact being used, including nickel and its compounds," Lee Sang-soo, a SHARPS activist, told a news conference, citing data reported by SK Hynix to the Environment Ministry.

SK Hynix said it was "taking various measures to more objectively identify the characteristics of disease occurrence" and was fully cooperating with government inquiries.

The company, which did not address the specific claims, said it had taken "proactive industrial health measures, including the development of a comprehensive support and compensation plan".