LG Display has begun recruiting next-generation OLED technology talent just four months after carrying out a large-scale voluntary retirement program. The strategy is to selectively reinforce research and development (R&D) capabilities even while maintaining its workforce efficiency drive.<\/p>\n
According to industry sources on the 1st, LG Display posted job openings for “2026 Second-Half Entry-Level Employees” and the industry-academic scholarship program “LGenius Master” on LG’s recruitment website on the 31st of last month. Applications will be accepted through the 16th of this month. A recruitment briefing introducing R&D roles and the company’s technological competitiveness is scheduled for the 14th.<\/p>\n
Entry-level positions span R&D fields including panel design, circuit design, mechanical design, and optical design, as well as B2B sales, business management, human resources management (HRM), and employee relations (ER). Technical roles involve core responsibilities in designing OLED panel structures and performance, driving circuits, and product mechanical and optical characteristics. The LGenius Master program, which selects master’s and doctoral-level scholarship students, also focuses on panel, circuit, mechanical, and optical design.<\/p>\n
A company official said, “Through the open recruitment of entry-level R&D employees in the second half of this year, we plan to select talent for key roles related to next-generation OLED technology development, including panel design, circuit design, mechanical design, and optical design.”<\/p>\n
The Intersection of Restructuring and Investment<\/p>\n
This hiring is notable because it comes in the context of LG Display’s multi-year workforce efficiency efforts. The company conducted two rounds of voluntary retirement for technical and production staff last year, followed by an additional round in April of this year targeting technical staff with five or more years of service and office staff with 20 or more years of service or aged 45 and above. The company offered its largest-ever compensation package, including severance equivalent to up to three years’ salary and children’s education expenses.<\/p>\n
As a result, the domestic workforce declined from 24,430 at the end of last year to 23,490 at the end of June this year, a reduction of 940 employees. Voluntary retirement costs amounted to 240 billion won (approximately $174.7 million). Kim Sung-hyun, LG Display’s chief financial officer (CFO, executive vice president), said during the second-quarter earnings conference call in July, “We pursued this workforce restructuring with the determination that it would effectively be the last.”<\/p>\n
LG Display’s policy is to reinforce technical talent needed for growth areas such as next-generation OLED and artificial intelligence transformation (AX) even while reducing overall headcount. The company is pursuing a total investment of 3 trillion won (approximately $2.2 billion) to strengthen next-generation OLED technology competitiveness. R&D spending in the first half of this year reached 1.1745 trillion won (approximately $855.1 million), accounting for 10.5% of revenue \u2014 up 1.9 percentage points from last year’s annual R&D ratio of 8.6%.<\/p>\n
South Korea’s Display Industry Reinvests in OLED<\/p>\n
LG Display’s hiring aligns with the broader investment shift across South Korea’s display industry. Samsung Display has begun placing orders for structural work on the A7 plant at its Asan Campus 2 in South Chungcheong Province, resuming construction after a five-year hiatus since the project was halted in 2021. The move is part of the Chungcheong region megaproject announced on the 2nd of last month, which calls for investing 67 trillion won (approximately $48.8 billion) in Cheonan and Asan, South Chungcheong Province, by 2040 to build advanced OLED and ultra-high-resolution micro display production facilities.<\/p>\n
LG Display also committed approximately 1.3 trillion won (approximately $946.5 million) last year and approximately 1.2 trillion won (approximately $873.7 million) this year to new technology investments. Combined with 1.5 trillion won (approximately $1.1 billion) from the National Growth Fund and 1.5 trillion won in company investment, a total of 3 trillion won will be deployed toward next-generation OLED technology development and production infrastructure.<\/p>\n
Both companies have been restructuring their businesses by exiting LCD operations, where profitability deteriorated due to aggressive low-cost competition from China. Samsung Display ended LCD production in 2022 and pivoted to small- and mid-sized OLED and quantum dot (QD)-OLED. LG Display also decided to sell its LCD TV panel plant in Guangzhou, China in 2024, completing the transaction in April of last year. Operating losses, which reached 2.51 trillion won (approximately $1.8 billion) in 2023, narrowed to 560.6 billion won (approximately $408.2 million) in 2024, and the company returned to an annual profit (517 billion won) last year for the first time in four years.<\/p>\n
Market Outlook and China’s Pursuit<\/p>\n
The OLED market’s growth trajectory is clear. According to technology market research firm Omdia, OLED’s share of global display market revenue is projected to rise from 38.2% this year to 43.6% by 2030, while LCD’s share is expected to decline from 60.4% to 53.9%. The OLED market itself is forecast to grow approximately 24%, from $48.3 billion (approximately 66.3 trillion won) this year to $59.8 billion (approximately 82.1 trillion won) by 2030.<\/p>\n
A Samsung Display official said, “We exited LCD because it wasn’t profitable, but there is still a technology gap with China in OLED. The transition to OLED in smartphones has largely progressed, but applications are expanding to monitors, tablets, laptops, and automotive displays, leaving additional room for growth.”<\/p>\n
However, China’s pursuit remains a key variable. Of the world’s four 8.6-generation OLED production lines, three \u2014 operated by Chinese vendors BOE, Visionox, and CSOT \u2014 are being built in China, with Samsung Display’s Asan A6 being the sole exception. Lee Jae-ho, a research fellow at Counterpoint Research, said, “South Korea leads in OLED technology, but if China scales up in volume the way it did with LCD, there will be limits to maintaining superiority through technology alone. I hope South Korea does not lose OLED leadership through continuous development and timely investment.”<\/p>\n
Note: The won conversions for $48.3 billion and $59.8 billion are reference figures based on exchange rates at the time of editing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"LG Display has begun recruiting next-generation OLED technology talent just four months after carrying out a large-scale voluntary…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":139466,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[9121,11446,36452,14603,315,2482,314,359,24867,11559,70959],"class_list":["post-139465","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-lg","tag-boe","tag-counterpoint-research","tag-csot","tag-kim-sung-hyun","tag-lg","tag-lg-display","tag-lg-group","tag-oled","tag-omdia","tag-samsung-display","tag-visionox"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/139465","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=139465"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/139465\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/139466"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=139465"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=139465"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=139465"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}