Korean Job Discussion Forums

[Isehtis]

About a month ago, I started to get suspicious that my new boss wasn't paying health insurance and pension, I asked him and he assured me he was. I asked to see a payslip so I could see the deductions, and he avoided it until Friday when I told him I wouldn't teach any more until I saw the pay slip.

So he finally gives it me, and says actually he hasn't been paying it, or the pension because it apparently isn't his job to do so. I've read online from different sources that health insurance is mandatory, I've tried to explain this to him but he says that since the source is in English, it must be wrong.

Can anyone point me to a Korean site that explains it's the employers duty? Or am I in the wrong here.

I'm British, so I can't actually claim the pension back and really don't care about it, but health insurance is kind of important to me,

[TheUrbanMyth]

[Gorf]

What TUM said, but what does your contract say? Does it specifically say "the employee shall..." etc.? I worked for a hagwon that got around that one by stating "the teacher shall..." and whatnot. If your contract doesn't say "employee" then the legal matters and complicated. The fact that he lies about it is kind of a dead giveaway as to whether or not he should be, I would guess.

Also, contact the labor board.

[Wildbore]

Contact the pension office. The contract is irrelevent in many cases.

The National Pension Act has a definition of employee, which would be used as the basis for whether or not you should be enrolled.

[Weigookin74]

[mark.walters2]

Maybe you can negotiating to get those benefits?

[Son Deureo!]

Before you threaten or pull another sit-down strike at work, you might want to try contacting the National Health Insurance Corporation and/or the National Pension Service so that you can find out what exactly you're entitled to. Once you've squared that away, they'll probably be more than willing to enlighten your boss if he's been breaking any laws. Your boss might not be willing to listen to you, but a call from the government would probably change his tune. If he's been deducting money from your paycheck for pension and/or health insurance, and not actually contributing, you'd also have a valid claim with the Labor Board and he might even be criminally liable for fraud.

Since you're from the UK and won't be able to get back anything you pay into National Pension you should probably know that pension and health insurance are generally linked, it's probably impossible to pay into one and not the other. Pension contributions are 4.5% of your salary, or about 100,000 a month on a 2.2 mil/month salary. When your boss is putting in matching contributions that you'll get back it's profitable to be complying with the law, but in your case considerably less so.

Here's the contact info for the relevant agencies:

National Health Insurance Corporation (English consultation): 02-390-2000 http://www.nhic.or.kr/portal/site/eng/

National Pension Board: http://english.nps.or.kr/jsppage/app/english/contact/contact_01.jsp (Open in Internet Explorer, then click on the link for your jurisdiction for contact info)

Labor Board hotline: 1350 (I can tell you from experience that they have very helpful English-speaking reps)

[mj roach]

Is he taking tax money from your pay? Very likely he's not paying it to the tax office (or in full).

Problems similar to yours have been solved in the past with mention of a trip to the tax office to check on your status.

He's probably got more to worry about from them in fines than he does from the labor board.

Could be some leverage for you OR might get you fired for making trouble THEN go to the labor board.