Kakao Corp's (035720.KS) labor union said Thursday it will proceed with a company-wide "Log-Out Day" on June 29, pressing ahead with collective action after wage and collective bargaining talks once again failed to produce an agreement.
Members of the union — formally the Kakao chapter of the Korean Chemical, Textile, Food and Allied Industries Workers Union — at five group entities including Kakao Corp, Kakao Pay, Kakao Enterprise, DK Techin and XL Games will take annual leave or personal days to abstain from work and log out of company systems throughout the day. The union said no offline rallies or press statements are planned for June 29, and that additional escalation measures, including further strikes, remain under discussion.
"The Log-Out Day will proceed as scheduled," a union representative said Thursday, adding that future strike formats would be announced separately depending on how management responds before the deadline.
A Dispute Rooted in RSUs and Profit-Sharing
The June 29 stoppage is the second collective action at Kakao in less than three weeks. The union staged its first-ever partial strike on June 10 — a four-hour work stoppage in which approximately 1,500 members participated across the group, with roughly 1,000 walking out at the Pangyo headquarters. Around 800 union members held a sit-in at the campus and conducted a march from Pangyo Station.
At the center of the dispute are two compensation demands the union says management has consistently refused to meet. The union is seeking restricted stock units (RSUs) worth approximately KRW 5 million (USD 3,640) per employee as a stand-alone grant, separate from annual bonuses, and performance bonuses equal to 13–15% of operating profit with existing compensation caps removed.
Management has countered by proposing to fold RSUs into the broader performance-reward pool, arriving at a combined payout of roughly 10.5% of operating profit — a gap the union characterizes as placing the burden of the company's restructuring on workers rather than on management decisions.
Labor talks resumed on June 19 following a collapse in mediation, but the two sides remained far apart as of Thursday's announcement.
Leadership Vacuum and Investor Optics
Kakao CEO Chung Shin-a and company founder Kim Beom-su have offered minimal public comment during the standoff. Management communications have been largely restricted to internal channels, a silence that observers say has done little to defuse tensions.
Kakao Corp trades at approximately KRW 34,250–36,800 per share, near the lower end of its KRW 36,500–71,600 twelve-month range, with a market capitalization of roughly KRW 15–16.2 trillion (USD 11–12 billion). The stock has more than halved from its 52-week high, reflecting a broader derating of Korean internet platforms amid slowing advertising revenue and competition from global AI-native services.
For investors, a June 29 all-day work stoppage structured around paid leave rather than a formal picket line limits immediate operational disruption — Kakao's platforms rely primarily on automated infrastructure rather than large manual workforces. The greater risk, analysts note, is reputational: a second collective action underscores that labor relations at one of Korea's flagship tech groups remain structurally unresolved, and that management has yet to put forward a proposal credible enough to end the standoff.
The union said it will continue to assess management's response ahead of June 29 and will announce next steps accordingly.
Sources: Yonhap News Agency, Chosun Biz, The Korea Times, The Elec
