[0:00]What if the company you work for couldn't legally fire you, ever? That sounds like a dream scenario for employees, but this is exactly what's happening in South Korea, where firing someone once you hire them is nearly impossible. Turns out, South Korea has one of the strictest labor laws among developed nations. And here is the irony. It's neither creating nor saving jobs. As a matter of fact, it's actually destroying the job market and even leading to employee deaths. How can that be? Let me share a quick story that recently blew up in the Korean media, and I'll explain how the story ties to the unintended consequences of these super strict Korean labor laws. On the morning of July 15th, 2025, Hwon Jung, a full-time employee at London Bagel Museum, which is a super trendy Korean bagel chain, woke up exhausted in his company dormitory. Hwon had only joined the company about 14 months ago, but the work hours were brutal to say the least. Just that week, he had pulled an 80-hour shift because the company was opening a new store in Inchan, and Hwon was helping prepare for the launch. That day was going to be another long one. His shift would start at 9:00 a.m. and wouldn't end until midnight, a grueling 15 hours. But that wasn't even his worst shift that week. You see, five days earlier, he had worked 21 hours straight, starting at 9:00 a.m. and not leaving until 6:00 a.m. the next morning. When he got back to the company dorm just before midnight, his co-workers asked him to join them for late night snack. But even though Hwon hadn't eaten dinner that day, he told them he was way too tired to eat and went straight to his room. The next morning, July 16th, 2025, his co-workers noticed that something was wrong. Hwon was always the first one up, waking earliest every day to shower before work. That morning, his door stayed closed. When they went to check on him, they found his lifeless, already stiffened body. Paramedics arrived nine minutes later and Hwon was pronounced dead from cardiac arrest. He was 26 years old. The autopsy found no pre-existing medical conditions. No heart disease, no illness, nothing that would explain why a healthy young man would die in his sleep. Except for one thing, he had worked 80 hours the week before his death. The news of Hwon's death exploded across Korean media, and on October 28th, 2025, London Bagel Museum CEO issued an apology on social media for the family's pain and the company's inadequate response. The Ministry of Employment and Labor launched workplace inspections of London Bagel Museum to investigate excessive working hours and unpaid wages. This, by the way, isn't an isolated case. In the past five years, over 1,000 workers in South Korea have died from overwork, an average of over 200 deaths per year. This is the paradox of Korean labor law. Protections designed to create and save jobs are somehow creating a system where workers are burning out from overwork and exhaustion. On paper, South Korea's youth unemployment rate looks deceptively low, around 5 to 6%. But talk to young Koreans and you'll hear a very different story, one where getting a stable full-time job feels almost impossible. The South Korean government has poured billions of dollars into job creation programs and tighter labor law enforcement. Yet the problems persist. International companies hesitate to set up operations in South Korea, and Korea's brightest young talents are packing their bags to seek opportunities abroad. So, how does something with good intentions backfire so spectacularly? To understand that, we need to look at how these laws actually work and what happens when you literally cannot fire anyone. But before we even get to that, let's first examine the historical context that explains how the current Korean labor law came into existence because the story is absolutely insane. Let's dive in.
[4:25]Picture South Korea in the 1960s. The country had just survived the devastating Korean War that killed millions and left cities like Seoul in complete ruins. Nearly a quarter of the population was homeless, and the GDP per capita was around 100 US dollars per year. That's right. I said $100 a year. South Korea was poorer than the Philippines, Cambodia, and even North Korea. The country survived mostly on foreign aid from the US. In that world, you could imagine workers or people in general weren't exactly treated as citizens with rights because national survival had to be prioritized above all individual rights. At least in the mind of one leader. But just in 20 years, by 1980, South Korea had become an industrial powerhouse with a GDP per capita of 1714. Exports exploded by 25% every single year throughout the 1970s. Steel production increased 14 times. Shipbuilding became the world's second largest industry. This economic rocket ship would later make South Korea one of the richest and most developed countries in the world, and it would be known as the Miracle on the Han River. The Han River, of course, is the giant river that flows through Seoul that for centuries served as Korea's economic lifeline, moving cargo between regions, supplying drinking water, and providing fish to feed the population. And there was one man responsible for this economic miracle. His name was Chung Hee Park, a military general who staged a coup on May 16th, 1961 to overthrow South Korea's struggling democratic government and became the third president of South Korea in 1963. Chung Hee Park remains South Korea's one of the most divisive political figures. Supporters credit him with transforming South Korea from poverty to prosperity and laying the foundation for today's $36,000 per capita economy. Critics condemn him as a brutal authoritarian dictator who crushed democracy, exploited workers, and created the Chebol dominated economy that still feels inequality today. That's right. It was on the Park's expert driven industrial policy, the Chebols or family on conglomerates like Samsung, Hyundai and LG rose to dominance. Chebols received preferential treatment because they were able to export goods overseas and bring in foreign dollars. Park's response to critics, it was better to have powerful Korean companies dominating the economy rather than remaining a poor agricultural nation. The bottom line is, Park was determined to do whatever it took, no matter the human cost, to lift South Korea out of abject poverty. Park found the dependency on the US aid deeply shameful because it made up a staggering 70 to 80% of South Korea's budget in the 1950s. And his number one goal became achieving economic self-reliance rooted in state guided capitalism. So that's all good, but what inevitably followed was the human cost. Park explicitly believed that individual freedoms and worker welfare had to be sacrificed for the greater good of national development. This wasn't just rhetoric. He did what he said he would. Labor unions were suppressed as threats to export competitiveness. Strikes were banned and organizers were arrested. Wages were kept artificially low to maintain manufacturing advantages. Working conditions were brutal. Basically, Park turned the entire country of South Korea into one giant export machine by first focusing on light industries like textiles, electronics and footwear. You know, the stuff that didn't require massive capital, but could employ millions of people. Then, once he got cash flowing into South Korea, he invested in heavy industries like steel, shipbuilding and chemicals. Now, here is where the human cost becomes really clear. For example, young women and teenage girls between the age of 14 and 24 made up 60 to 90% of workers in the textile districts. They were working 14 to 16 hours a day, sometimes only getting one or two days off per month for less than $30 a month. Of course, this didn't just apply to women. In Soul's industrial districts, you had workshops where workers were crammed into tiny spaces with no ventilation, locked fire exits, and supervisors who treated people like machines. The Park regime literally called these workers industrial soldiers and expected them to sacrifice for the national mission. There's a famous story in South Korea of Tejan, a 22-year-old tailor, who forever changed Korean labor history in 1970. Working as a cutting assistant in Seoul's garment district, Tejan was crammed into those same basement workshops, working those same 15-hour shifts. But while most workers were too exhausted or scared to speak up, Tejan started paying attention to just how bad things really were. So he set out to document everything like an investigative journalist. His survey of fellow workers revealed some absolutely insane stuff. Factories were squeezing four to five workers into spaces about the size of a small closet. They would split 10-ft high floors into two levels just to pack in more workers, so people literally couldn't stand up straight while working. To make matters worse, the average worker was about 15 years old, and they were working 15 to 16 hours a day for wages so low, they couldn't even afford a single bowl of soup after a full day's work. 500 workers shared a single bathroom, so people avoided drinking water just to avoid bathroom trips during their shifts. So Tejan tried everything to expose the working conditions of the people. He went to a radio station, no interest. He approached a major newspaper, but still nothing changed. So he tried to organize a street rally. Police denied permission. So on November 13th, 1970, Tejan came up with a plan. He was going to burn a copy of the Labor Standards Law during a public demonstration. Now, this law technically existed on paper to protect workers' rights, but clearly, nobody was actually enforcing it. So Tejan's message was pretty simple. If this law is worthless, let's literally burn it to show everyone how meaningless it is. But the plan leaked to the police, who swamped the protest sites and prevented workers from showing up. When the protest was about to fail completely, Tejan poured gasoline over his own body and set himself on fire. Running through the streets shouting, obey the Labor Standards Act. We are not machines. Let us rest on Sundays. He was rushed to the hospital, but died nine hours later from severe burns. As he lay dying, surrounded by his mother and friends, his famous final words before losing consciousness were, I'm hungry. Tejan's death planted a seed. You see, he became a symbol, proof that workers could no longer tolerate their suffering. Throughout the 1970s, that seed grew. Other workers started organizing. Students began infiltrating factories to support labor movements and the resistance was building momentum. Then in 1979, things reached a boiling point. Female workers at a company called YH Trading suddenly faced unemployment when their bosses secretly diverted company funds. Nearly 200 women saw refuge at the headquarters of the main opposition political party to Parks regime to draw public attention to their plight. In response, Park sent riot police to storm the opposition party's building and forcibly removed the female workers. During the chaotic raid, a 21-year-old worker fell from the building and died. It's not clear from the historical record whether she fell accidentally or was pushed, but either way, her body showed the signs of severe beating. And the Park regime had gone too far this time. The violent crackdown on both the female workers and the opposition party triggered massive protests across the country. Thousands of citizens burning police stations and government buildings in the largest anti-government demonstration since Park took power. Now, there's a lot more to the story, but on October 26th, 1979, during a heated dinner argument about how to handle the protest and other internal disputes, President Chung Hee Park was assassinated by his own intelligence chief. Now, I need to be clear on this point. The workers hadn't assassinated Park directly, but their resistance and the government's violent overreaction had created the political chaos that ultimately brought the Park regime to its knees. The labor movement that Park thought he had crushed had helped topple one of Asia's most powerful and economically successful dictators. But here's the thing, the workers' nightmare wasn't over with Park's assassination. If anything, it got way worse. Because within months of Park's assassination, another military strongman named Duan Jun seized power in yet another coup, and for the next eight years, South Korea would live under even more brutal crackdown on all forms of descent. President Chun had learned from his predecessor's downfall and was determined that he wasn't going to let any kind of organizing challenge his rule. Workers who tried to organize unions didn't just get fired, they faced imprisonment, torture and sometimes death. Chun imposed an absolute ban on all union organizing, and labor activists were arrested and painted in the media as communist agitators. The message was clear, any challenge to authority, whether political or labor related, would be crushed. There's one incident from our research that really demonstrates how desperate things had become for average workers. At a textile factory in 1976, when management tried to crush the workers' independent union and replaced it with a company controlled puppet union, around 500 to 800 female workers decided to fight back and stage a sit-in strike. For three days, the company cut off electricity and water to force them out, but they didn't move. So riot police were brought in to break up the protest. As the combat police in full gear began approaching, these women made a desperate calculation. They told themselves that if they got undressed, the police wouldn't be able to lay hands on them. So they stripped down to just underwear, some fully naked, but mostly half-naked, thinking this would stop the police from beating them in front of any witnesses. They were wrong. According to the survivors' account, the police beat them anyway. They hit the naked women with batons, threw them to the ground and dragged them into the police vans. This was the grim reality of the 1980s. With each publicized incident of crackdowns on workers, the labor movement was building towards an explosion. And that moment came in 1987. Workers across the entire country went on strike simultaneously. Shipyard workers, auto workers at Hyundai, textile workers, miners, construction workers, entire industries shut down. Over 1 million workers participated in what became known as the Great Workers' Struggle. At Hyundai Heavy Industries alone, 30,000 workers occupied the shipyard for weeks. They weren't just demanding better wages, they were demanding the right to form independent unions, the right to collective bargaining and basic human dignity at work. The Jun government was caught completely off guard. After decades of crushing any hint of labor organizing, they suddenly faced a nationwide worker revolt that was too massive to suppress. President Jun, isolated by protests and mass strikes, was forced to step down after the June Democracy Movement, which triggered the creation of a new democratic constitution by the end of 1987. With the entire country at a standstill, employers and newly formed independent unions negotiated directly over wages and working conditions. Under intense public scrutiny, companies conceded to wage rises of 20 to 30% across major industries almost overnight. More importantly, after decades of suppression, over 2,000 new independent labor unions sprang up between July and September 1987 alone. This explosion of worker power in 1987 and the subsequent labor law reform is what directly led to today's extreme labor protections. Korean society went from workers have no rights to workers must never be exploited again, practically overnight. The pendulum swung so far in the opposite direction that it created the system South Korea is dealing with today.
[18:08]After the mass labor uprisings in 1987, the Korean government was forced to overhaul its labor law.
[18:18]After President Chun stepped down, his successor, Taewoo, implemented sweeping changes to the Labor Standards Act, especially Article 23 and 24, which created some of the world's strictest protections against firing employees. Article 23 provides that employers cannot dismiss a worker without justifiable cause. Justifiable cause here means extremely serious misconduct, such as theft, violence, or a situation so critical that keeping someone employed would be an excessive burden for the company. Dismissal for ordinary poor performance or business slowdown is not enough. Which is interesting, since those will be considered valid reasons for termination in most countries. Article 24 provides that companies cannot lay off workers for managerial reasons unless they can prove an urgent business necessity, such as imminent bankruptcy. Employers must try all other options first, such as pay cuts or temporary shutdowns before resorting to layoffs. Now, can you see what the issue is? On the surface, these provisions seem pretty reasonable, but when you actually look at the definitions like justifiable cause and urgent business necessity, they're so vague that it's really up to subjective interpretation. And who's the interpreter and arbiter? The Labor Relations Commission, a special quasi-judicial panel that was created specifically to mediate and adjudicate labor disputes. So, this is the process. If you get fired for pretty much any reason, you can file a complaint at the local Ministry of Employment and Labor Office. That office then escalates the matter to the Labor Relations Commission, and if the commission finds that your dismissal was not justifiable, it can order your reinstatement or award you financial compensation. Companies that violate these rulings can face tough penalties, up to five years imprisonment for the responsible executive, including the CEO, or finds of 30 million one or roughly 25,000 US dollars. The problem here is that the Labor Relations Commission sides with workers so often that it raises questions about its independence as a judicial body. According to a 2023 report by the National Labor Relations and Commission, more than half of all labor disputes, about 57%, are settled or resolved through mediation. Usually with the company agreeing to compensate or reinstate the employee. In some regions, the mediation settlement rate can reach as high as 90%, which is crazy high by international standards and demonstrates just how much practical leverage workers have in Korea's labor dispute system. Let me give you an example that demonstrates this bias. In September 2020, the head of a Youth Counseling Welfare Center in South Korea was fired for repeatedly sexually harassing and bullying his subordinates. Multiple victims, eight to be exact, came forward with complaints. Although he was the director, he was technically an employee of the foundation that owned the Welfare Center. Once an investigation confirmed the abuse, his employer, the Foundation, fired him. So what did the director do? He sued the foundation for wrongful termination and won. The Labor Relations Commission ruled the termination illegal and ordered the foundation to reinstate him so that he could return to work alongside his victims. Their reasoning was that only part of the staff was victimized. His misconduct wasn't that severe and was just part of his general work attitude. That he lacked intent to harm, and he made valuable contributions to the organization. So apparently, sexually harassing eight of his employees wasn't enough of a justifiable cause for getting fired in the eyes of the commission. It was so outrageous that the victims held a press conference in horror on March 8th, 2021, warning that dreadful days were coming where victims and the perpetrator would have to work side by side. If you think that was an isolated incident, let me give you another example. WeWork, the now infamous co-working space company that spectacularly collapsed from a 47 billion dollar valuation to bankruptcy, actually has an office in Korea. Between 2019 and 2020, WeWork laid off over 4,000 employees globally, roughly 1/3 of its entire workforce as it desperately needed to survive. In the UK, Canada and across Europe, thousands lost their jobs virtually overnight. But in South Korea, WeWork Korea offered voluntary severance packages to all Korean staff in 2020 and 2021, with the US headquarters reportedly wanting to exit the Korean market entirely. The problem was that WeWork Korea employees could simply refuse the packages, and Korean labor law gave WeWork no way to force them out. The company couldn't prove urgent managerial necessity specifically for Korea and couldn't meet the fair selection criteria for mass layoffs, even as the whole company was going bankrupt.
[23:55]Think about that. So five years later, after the global collapse, WeWork Korea is still operating like 20 locations, while the US parent company filed for bankruptcy in November 2023. Somehow, Korean labor law has created a parallel universe where bankrupt company's Korean subsidiary simply couldn't die. At this point, if you're thinking, surely, there must be some way people get fired in South Korea. You're not entirely wrong. There are workarounds, but the reality is much messier, and the unintended consequences are pretty wild. That's exactly what we're going to take a look at next.
[24:42]Instead of firing employees out right, Korean companies often use subtle tactics to push out problematic or underperforming employees. There's a term called Kwansik, which means voluntary resignation.
[24:58]This is when the company encourages you to quit on your own. Maybe they'll explain that the business is struggling and needs to downsize, and then they offer you a reasonable severance package to keep you satisfied. Ideally ensuring you won't report them to the local Ministry of Employment and Labor. Speaking of reasonable severance packages, for any employee with more than one year of service, Korean companies must pay at least one month's average wage for every year worked under Korean law. But top companies, especially multinationals, often go much further, offering voluntary resignation packages with several extra months of pay as an incentive to leave quietly. For example, when Google Korea needed to downsize, they reportedly offered six months of salary, with a warning that the offer would drop to three months or less after a certain deadline. Similarly, according to industry reports and employees, Netflix regularly offers generous severance far beyond the minimum. In some cases, four or more months' pay for even short-term employees. So, if you accept and sign a resignation letter, the company is technically not firing you. So you cannot claim later that you're unfairly dismissed. But what if you don't want to quit because you feel that it's unfair? Now, that's when things can get pretty nasty with office politics and social pressure. A nationwide survey found that nearly one in three Korean workers has experienced or witnessed being pressured to resign. Often through subtle methods that don't officially count as dismissal. Here are a few examples. The company may stop giving you meaningful tasks, leaving you bored and sidelined. Suddenly, you could lose access to office servers, work tools, or even your own desk, making it very uncomfortable to stay. Or the company might do the opposite, bombarding you with unrealistic workloads and impossible deadlines to wear you down and drive you out. Sometimes, they might even post job listings for your same role, suddenly signaling to everyone that your position is on the way out, even before you're officially told. Then comes isolation and humiliation. People are left out of meetings, projects, or social events, and gossip about underperformers quietly spreads. Basically, people start talking shit behind your back. In one infamous example from a large Korean conglomerate, its HR department circulated internal memo categorizing certain employees as underperformers or troublemakers. These employees were then monitored, assigned difficult or pointless projects, and socially excluded in the hope they will leave on their own. The company even tracked complaints and negative attitudes by collecting feedback from managers and peers. Now, if you're pressured into resigning, you can still appeal to the Ministry of Employment and Labor. But the burden of proof in these cases lies with the employee. It is up to the employee to show evidence like emails, messages or testimony from co-workers. As you might expect, this isn't easy. What if the company deletes email trails, or worse yet, never puts anything in writing to begin with? How do you even prove to the Labor Relations Commission that you're left out of social events or that people were gossiping about you behind your back? And one makes you think that your co-workers who may have already ganged up to push you out, would risk their jobs to testify in your favor. This is a perfect example of how strict laws are forcing companies to find ever more creative ways to get rid of people in practice. By the way, the same level of social pressure can also be used to push out older and more senior employees. In the vast majority of Korean companies, employees are compensated not based on merit or performance, but rather based on age and seniority. So when companies need to cut costs and downsize, those in their 40s and beyond are often the first on the chopping block. It's called myong ye te jik or honorable retirement. And older employees, typically in their mid to late 40s, are asked to retire early and honorably to make room for a younger and quite frankly, cheaper workforce. If they refuse, the same social pressure and unofficial exclusion will often force them to quit on their own. By the way, can you guess who else suffers under this kind of toxic office politics? Besides the ones who get pushed out, it's the actual high performers and competent employees who just want to get the job done and work in a motivating, productive environment. In order for companies to survive and compete, especially in tough economic times, they should be fully focused on creating the best possible product and serving their customers, right? But when so much time and energy is being wasted on pushing people out, and teams are busy forming factions and creating a toxic environment, do you think high performers would enjoy working there? What motivates A players is the opportunity to work with other A players, to push each other, improve, and achieve real results. They want to see the impact of their work, not waste time playing office politics in a rigid hierarchy. That's why, in the Korean tech industry, especially in the field of AI, the smartest talent is now leaving South Korea for opportunities in the US and other countries, even when Korean companies try to offer more money. Of course, the reasons for this brain drain are more complicated and multifaceted, but it's undeniable that the negative repercussions of Korea's current labor laws and corporate work culture are driving much of this exodus. Let's circle back to the story of the London Bagel Museum employee who died from overwork. What happens when companies become so afraid of not being able to fire or let go of employees? They simply stop hiring new full-time staff. In 2025, a survey found that 56% of mid-sized Korean companies have no plans to hire new full-time employees, citing the increasing burden of labor costs and deteriorating performance as their top reasons. What this means is that many Korean companies are chronically understaffed because they cannot afford to hire new people and risk not being able to let them go later, especially if they end up underperforming or are simply underutilized. As a result, existing employees are forced to pick up the slack and work excessive overtime. And when these overworked employees collapse, it is the company that ends up facing government investigations. So to avoid the legal risks associated with firing, many Korean companies instead hire only temporary or contract workers. Official government statistics show that as of 2025, over 1/3 of Korean wage earners are employed in these contract roles, a number that is even higher among younger workers and new job seekers. These positions give businesses the flexibility to end employment at will, but contract and temporary staff often miss out on standard benefits like the national pension and health insurance, which are required for permanent employees, but commonly skipped for short-term hires. While Korean law sets a national minimum wage, many Korean companies get around these requirements by hiring workers on ultra short-term contracts or misclassifying them as independent contractors or freelancers, which allows them to pay less than the legal minimum.
[32:51]Recent changes to Korea's labor law suggest that things could get even tougher for small businesses and startups. The Korean government began enforcing the 52-hour maximum work week in 2021, and this remains the law in 2025. Again, the intentions are good. They want to protect workers from being overworked. Cool. But as always, it's just the way these rules are implemented in real life that causes problems. Because a regulation applies to every Korean company with five or more employees. This means even the smallest startups have to comply. Big Korean companies, they managed to work around the rules so employees still end up working just as long, feeling the global image of Koreans as super hard workers. But for founder led startups and small business owners, there's nowhere to hide. Sweat equity and flexible hours are often all startups have to survive and compete, and right now, the law's really not helping. For example, a CEO of a small accounting firm that I know has repeatedly been reported by his own accountants to the labor authorities for requiring overtime. Get this, during busy tax seasons, even though their worklo dramatically drops in the off season, which they never complain about. He had to personally attend hearings at the Labor Relations Commission to resolve these disputes, losing precious time on actually running a business as CEO. The bottom line is that despite government efforts to create more jobs by tightening labor laws, South Korea now has fewer stable full-time positions than before, especially for young graduates trying to enter the workforce. Data from mid-2025 shows the worst hiring slump for full-time job seekers since the Asian Financial Crisis, with fewer than 40 open full-time jobs for every 100 applicants. In trying to protect workers from all potential abuse, the pendulum has swung so far in the opposite direction that companies no longer want to hire full-time workers. And even if they did, the very talent and innovation the country needs to thrive is being driven away. To make matters more complicated, the Korean government is planning to attract more global companies to set up their Asia headquarters in South Korea. But it remains to be seen whether multinational giants are willing to navigate what some have called the mind fields of Korean labor law that even world class companies find difficult to manage. So, can South Korea find the right balance between protecting workers and fostering innovation, or will it just double down on outdated labor policies that are holding the country back just as new opportunities are emerging and cultures are evolving? As breakthrough technologies like AI are about to disrupt the job market forever, the answer may either break the country's future or reshape it into the next miracle on the Han River. If you found this video insightful, make sure to subscribe to Asian Boss and share this video with your friends and network. Our mission is to deliver business leaders and the next generation of changemakers, the most authentic in-depth insights from Asia. Stories you simply won't find in Western media. We do our best to research every topic as much as possible, but as a small team, we know we might not get everything right. And that's where you come in. Add your own context, share your own experiences in the comments to inform others, or even make a reaction video. Whatever inspires you to help grow this community of globally minded leaders. When we first switched to these long-form explainer videos, a lot of people told me that no one would watch these deep dives because people have shorter and shorter attention spans. But I didn't listen because I believed that there was an audience out there that values depth and substance. And by watching this video till the very end, you are proving those people wrong. In a world where nuance is missing and online arguments are seriously getting out of control, there's just something really cool and hopeful for me about engaging with long form content and sharing honest perspectives in a civil, constructive way. So thank you for being the leader that you are. Thank you so much for watching, and as always, stay curious.
