An uncompromising work culture comes with one safeguard: The difficulty of firing employees. But that belief may be overstated, and even contributing to job market strain.
An AI-generated image of a female worker getting fired by her manager.CHATGPT
Survive the long hours. Survive the hierarchy. Survive the workload. If you manage that, one thing is, or at least feels, certain: you'll keep your job. It's the trade-off behind the country's notoriously exhausting work life: the notion that you're nearly unfireable.
Headlines frequently bear this out. In 2025, a job applicant surnamed Park had barely celebrated getting a fintech job when his phone buzzed. Just four minutes earlier, the company had texted to say he had landed a position as a business strategist — the sort of white-collar position he had spent weeks dressing up for rounds of interviews for. He had just inquired about parking and his salary when another message arrived from the same number. The offer had been rescinded.
But thankfully for Park, a court ruled in March that the company had already entered into a legal contract with him upon sending the hiring notice, which meant that firing him without going through the proper legal process counted as an unfair dismissal.
As such, Korea’s notorious labor market isn’t just tough for workers who must endure straining hours; it is also challenging for companies, for which the legal barriers and administrative processes to lay off or fire workers can seem incredibly convoluted.
The strict legal framework has at times led employers to cliquish, exclusionary tactics to induce workers to quit, creating toxic office dynamics. Other times, they are reluctant to hire at all.
And as AI reshapes labor markets, youth employment falls and companies demand greater flexibility to compete, Korea’s dismissal law faces mounting pressure to adapt.
But, before all that, the real question many secretly wonder: Just exactly how hard is it to get fired in Korea right now?
Till ‘justifiable cause’ do us part
On paper, Korea actually ranks at the international average for the strictness of labor protections. The Employment Protection Legislation Index by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) places Korea modestly above the member standard.
Yet the country's rigid labor market has been cited as a key reason for its falling rank in international competitiveness evaluations. According to the "2025 World Competitiveness Ranking" released last year by Switzerland's International Institute for Management Development, Korea's labor market ranking fell to 53rd, down 22 spots from 31st in 2024. The main driver of that decline, business groups argue, is the rigid laws that compromise management efficiency by undermining flexibility.
What gives Korea its reputation for strict firing rules is legal language that sounds reasonable enough but is draconian in practice for employers. Article 23 of the Labor Standards Act states that "An employer shall not, without justifiable cause, dismiss, lay off, suspend, or transfer a worker, reduce his or her wages or take other punitive measures."
Justification hurdles too high, consequences no easier
The Supreme Court building in Seocho District, southern Seoul, on July 9YONHAP
The consequences for employers who fire and then get sued are substantial. In many countries, companies can terminate an employee by paying compensation. In Korea, however, dismissal without just cause is considered void, and the employee is entitled to return to their original position. The worker may choose a payout instead, but that choice is theirs alone.
That was the case of the aforementioned jobseeker, Park. The company had pulled his job offer by text message within four minutes of a phone call in which he'd asked about his salary — a call the company later cited as evidence he wasn't a good culture fit. Park sued, and the case dragged on for 21 months before the court ruled that the withdrawal amounted to an unjust dismissal, entitling him to reinstatement if he wanted to work for the company, as well as the salary for those 21 months of litigation.
"The courts' interpretation of what constitutes a justifiable reason is highly complex, and it is what gives Korea its reputation as a country where firing employees is hard," said Park Ji-soon, a professor at Korea University's School of Law. For instance, to dismiss a worker based on individual performance or misconduct, employers generally need a substantial record of repeated evaluations and hard evidence over a significant period. "A few poor evaluations are unlikely to be sufficient.”
For layoffs during company restructuring, employers must similarly demonstrate "an urgent managerial necessity," substantiated by evidence of financial hardship or significant external economic changes. The restructuring plan must be concrete and clearly defined, the selection of employees for dismissal must be objective and transparent and employers must consult with employee representatives throughout the process.
Too easy for some companies
Yet for some, these protections are only theoretical. In a survey of 1,000 employed adults conducted in December 2024 by the workplace advocacy group Gabjil 119, 55.5 percent of the respondents said Korea is not a country where it is difficult to get fired.
The gap in perception reflects, in part, a shortfall in coverage. Dismissal protections under the Labor Standards Act apply only to workplaces with five or more employees. Businesses with four employees or fewer are exempt entirely.
As of August last year, workers at businesses with fewer than five employees numbered approximately 3.9 million, accounting for 17.4 percent of all salaried employees, according to statistics from the Ministry of Data and Statistics.
"Whether you view Korea's dismissal protection system favorably or unfavorably depends largely on whether you're looking at it from the employer's perspective or from the perspective of workers and labor unions," said Namgoong June, a research fellow at the Korea Labor Institute.
"Neither side will be fully satisfied, but right now it's a precarious balance, or a state of maintained status quo," he said, before invoking the parable of the blind men and an elephant: "It really depends on which part of the elephant you are touching."
“What we have now, though, is the result of years of adaptation and evolution to fit Korea's specific history and circumstances,” he explained.
History of military dictatorship, labor suppression to blame
A scene depicting the activist Jeon Tae-il from the docuseries "A Single Spark" (1995)JOONGANG ILBO
Although the Labor Standards Act was enacted in 1953 after the 1950-53 Korean War, it had little practical effect under authoritarian regimes that gripped the country for decades.
Koreans protest during the June Democracy Movement in downtown Seoul in 1987.JOONGANG ILBO
Under Park Chung Hee's authoritarian government, for instance, export-driven economic growth took priority, and keeping wages low and hours long was central to that model. In protest against these conditions, a 22-year-old garment worker named Jeon Tae-il self-immolated at a fabric market in Seoul in 1970, cementing his legacy as a labor activist. As he burned, he reportedly cried out: "Abide by the Labor Standards Act!" and "We are not machines!"
Labor suppression persisted under the authoritarian rule of Chun Doo Hwan, who held the presidency from 1980 to 1988. Genuine independent labor unions were practically illegal. Activists were routinely fired, blacklisted, tortured or jailed under anticommunist laws.
A major turning point arrived following the June Democracy Movement in 1987, a nationwide protest that forced the ruling government to accept direct presidential elections. Workers in the shipbuilding, automobile, steel and textile sectors all went on strike for basic human dignity and economic justice. At its peak, workers at more than 3,000 workplaces walked off the job, demanding wage increases, the right to form unions and better conditions.
Two years later, a 1989 amendment to the Labor Standards Act introduced an administrative remedy system for unfair dismissal, granting the National Labor Relations Commission explicit authority to handle individual cases. Previously, workers had to endure years of costly civil litigation to challenge a wrongful firing. The change bypassed the courts entirely, giving ordinary workers a faster, more practical and state-backed path to reinstatement and back pay.
Strong unions were established and employees were also able to actually assert their rights in court, completing the present-day labor market landscape.
Unintended double-edged sword
Though the dismissal rules were designed to protect workers, the rigidity of the system has produced consequences that cut both ways.
Because firing workers outright is so difficult, many companies opt instead to "encourage" resignation or mutually agree on termination. The arrangement occupies a legal middle ground where the employee retains the right to refuse, and the departure is classified as involuntary, maintaining eligibility for unemployment benefits.
The practice is common across OECD countries, and so are its darker side effects. An ill-famed example is workplace bullying or intense pressure that occurs when an employee refuses to accept a resignation package offered by the company.
An AI-generated image of an employee's bosses, inducing her to quitCHATGPT
According to the Gabjil 119 survey, 27 percent of respondents said they had experienced or witnessed tactics designed to force an employee out without a formal termination in 2024. The most common was being verbally told they were dismissed or should resign, then stripped of all work assignments, reported by 15.3 percent of respondents. Others described companies posting job openings for the employee's own position, changing office entry passwords and locking them out of company servers. The survey was done after the Workplace Harassment Prevention Act came into effect in Korea in 2019.
On the verified employee platform Blind, 357 posts mention "induced resignation."
One post from April last year asked other users whether they're experiencing similar pressure to quit: "My boss said to me today while we were eating, 'Do you like our company? They pay you so little. Why are you even here? […] Go to another company.' […] And yesterday, when I talked with my team lead, he said, 'You're not feeling well, why don't you take some time off? […] Either way, if you keep working here, it's a net negative for both of us.'"
The goal of these tactics is rarely subtle and sends the message that those employees are no longer wanted until it becomes impossible to ignore, without the company ever having to justify a termination in court.
The unintended consequences run in the other direction as well, where the system's extreme procedural rigidity can result in the reinstatement of employees whose underlying conduct warrants dismissal.
An appeals court in March, for instance, overturned a ruling that a semiconductor equipment company had lawfully dismissed a worker convicted of illegally filming a colleague. The court found that because the company had skipped internal disciplinary procedures, the termination was unfair regardless of the court-proven egregious misconduct.
Another ruling in June found that an employer that carried out a dismissal for poor performance and a falsified work history had unfairly terminated the employee because it listed “managerial necessity” on the formal termination notice instead of citing the documented reasons.
Protectionism isn’t always the answer
In an era where AI reshapes the labor landscape and companies demand greater flexibility to compete, the stringent barriers to parting ways with employees are adding pressure to a growing hiring chill.
Though Korea's overall unemployment rate sits around 2.9 percent as of early 2026, a major concern is the decline in youth employment. The number of young people entering regular jobs fell by 69,000 in 2025, following a 43,000 decline the previous year, according to a report by the Korea Labor Institute. Many young workers are flowing into fixed-term positions instead, which typically last under two years and lack regular employment protections.
The youth unemployment rate was 7.2 percent as of April 2026, up about 1 percent from the previous year, per the Ministry of Data and Statistics.
These trends have heightened debates over whether the current labor protection framework serves its purpose.
"The dismissal protection system was developed during the industrialization era, when worker protection was the dominant objective," Park, the Korea University professor, said. "Today, it is an obstacle to corporate competitiveness. For youth employment to expand, companies need to recruit aggressively and let poor fits go. If dismissing unsuitable employees is extremely difficult, employers become hesitant to hire to begin with."
He argued for relaxing dismissal standards and allowing employers to offer monetary compensation instead of reinstatement. "This would allow employers to remove problematic employees more effectively, encouraging firms to hire more actively."
The Korea Labor Institute researcher Namgoong agreed that reform is necessary, but argued that loosening protections cannot come at the expense of those who never had them.
"Reforms should move in a direction where workers in relatively more vulnerable positions can feel that the legal system actually works for them, and that should happen first, or at least at the same time," the researcher said.
"If the dismissal protection system is not applied to businesses with fewer than five employees, that gap should be fixed, either as part of a trade-off or on its own. And if the level of protection is to be relaxed somewhat for those who have long benefited from it, that relaxation needs to be exchanged for something. It should be mutual to be fair and justified.”
