HR & Korean Labor Compliance
A one-year-old wanders alone through a childcare center for twenty-five minutes. No teacher is watching him. He walks into an unlocked kitchen and falls into a pot of hot soup left on the floor. The center's director was charged with a workplace negligence offense for
HR & Korean Labor Compliance
A key employee resigns and moves straight to a competitor. For many employers, the first question is whether they can litigate to stop that move before real damage is done. The answer is yes, through a non-compete injunction, but only under specific conditions. This post gives a short introduction
Corporate Compliance
Foreign companies in Korea often assume that any employee who copies internal documents before leaving has committed a crime. That assumption is too broad. On April 24, 2025, the Supreme Court of Korea reversed a conviction in a case that clarifies exactly when removing company data crosses into occupational breach
HR & Korean Labor Compliance
Work rules does have an actual impact on the employee’s working conditions. What makes it difficult to revise is that if anything that can lower an employee's pay or benefits, this would require consent from the employees. This post covers the basic legal framework first, then the
HR & Korean Labor Compliance
Unused annual leave is a wage claim. That is the rule covered in our companion post on annual leave accrual and compensation. But the Labor Standards Act (LSA) gives employers one statutory way out. Article 61 sets up a "leave use promotion" procedure. Run it correctly, and the
HR & Korean Labor Compliance
Annual paid leave can be confusing. This is one of the areas where less experienced HR teams receive various inquiries and complaints from the employees. This post walks through the statutory framework, shows how leave accrues with a worked example, and explains when unused leave should be paid out. The
HR & Korean Labor Compliance
Korea's Serious Accidents Punishment Act (중대재해처벌법, "SAPA") holds business owners and top management personally accountable — including potential criminal liability — when a workplace death or severe injury results from a failure to build and operate a proper safety and health management system. For foreign-invested companies operating
HR & Korean Labor Compliance
If someone at your company is being harassed at work, where can you report this? There could be two main paths: The first runs through the employer. The second goes directly to the government. Neither path is exclusive. Further to our previous entries, this Part 4 dig on reporting process.
HR & Korean Labor Compliance
When a workplace harassment complaint comes in, a company's attention naturally focuses toward "who did what" — identifying the parties, taking statements, establishing the facts. What should not be missed during the process is the duty to protect the affected employee, even before harassment has been formally
HR & Korean Labor Compliance
In Part 1 of this series, we covered the statutory definition of workplace harassment and the basic framework under the Labor Standards Act. This post goes deeper: when does the duty to investigate kick in, and how thorough does an investigation actually need to done? When the Duty Arises Article
HR & Korean Labor Compliance
If you run a business in Korea, workplace harassment is one of the most important topics to be aware of. It is not a soft-skills issue. Rather, it is a statutory compliance obligation with reporting duties, investigation requirements with potential criminal exposure. Just yesterday on July 2, 2026, the
HR & Korean Labor Compliance
Korean law places no restriction on a company's freedom to hire a fixed-term employee. What the law restricts instead is duration — and getting that duration wrong is one of the most common mistakes foreign-invested employers make in Korea. The statutory rule Article 4 of the Act