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President Lee meets KCTU chief to discuss worker rights protection

Published: 10 Apr. 2026, 17:48

President Lee Jae Myung, right, shakes hands with Yang Kyung-soo, president of the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions, during a meeting with the group at the Blue House on April 10. [JOINT PRESS CORPS]

President Lee Jae Myung met Friday with the leader of the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions (KCTU), a major umbrella labor union, and exchanged views on protecting workers' rights.

Lee invited KCTU President Yang Kyung-soo and other leaders of the organization to the Blue House, where he addressed the pitfalls of a current law requiring employers to hire non-regular workers as permanent workers after two years of employment.

He noted that despite the law's initial aim of promoting permanent employment, it has led employers to limit contract durations to one year and 11 months.

"I would like us to come up with a realistic solution," Lee said. "A law meant to protect workers has effectively become a law mandating their neglect."

Yang offered a positive assessment of some of the administration's labor policies but also demanded a sharp increase in the minimum wage, mandatory assessments of the impact of AI on labor and improvements to the working conditions of non-regular workers in the public sector.

Yonhap