Korean Job Discussion Forums

benblex · Joined: 15 Sep 2005 Location: Seoul, South Corea

A lot of jobs that have you working 30-40 hours/week in Korea seem to be still be classified as "part time." I spoke with a Korean friend about this and she said, it's the same for most Korean workers. Basically, you work the same job as a "full timer," the company just decides who's one or the other, which translates into who gets more benefits, etc. She said, almost always, newbies get the "part time" label with the possibility of full time status later down the line. Particularly, big companies are famous for this 2-tiered system. Sounds a lot like the labor situation in the States, the shift between secure, full-time jobs to less secure, part-time status jobs, all an effort by management to save a buck off the worker's backs. Is this the case in Korea? Any way to get around it, and has it always been like this? Guess that right-ward shift is happening in Korea, too.

Ya-ta-Boy was nice enough to provide his insightful summary of the situation. My thanks to him for the following. Hope you don't mind me posting your words...

"Part time vs Full time:
This is hard to explain because I don't fully understand it myself. It is something like this: A company (or the government) decides how many full time employees it will have. These people get all the benefits--insurance, etc. Everyone else, while they work the same number of hours as a full time employee don't get the benefits. Maybe none of the benefits. No insurance. No severance. No nothing, as far as I can tell.

I think full and part time are bad translations. Permanent and short-term may be a more accurate translations.

There may be a relationship with who can be considered life-time employees with all the security and the nervous basket cases that everyone else is."

benblex · Joined: 15 Sep 2005 Location: Seoul, South Corea

btw, if this post is redundant i hope i don't get flamed. i did a search but didn't find anything...

Hollywoodaction · Joined: 02 Jul 2004

sheba · Joined: 16 May 2005 Location: Here there and everywhere!

And sometimes the teachers prefer not to pay their share of the benefits and therefore ask to register as as a part time employee (their actual contact-teaching time is then recorded as hours worked). Im the only teacher at my hagwon that has registered for health insurance (and thus pension).

Ya-ta Boy · Joined: 16 Jan 2003 Location: Established in 1994

I'll give a fuller account of where I got my information.

In '97, during the financial collapse, I was teaching at a research institute. Because of the collapse, the government cut their funding. The administration asked most of the 'part-time' employees to quit so that the money available could be paid to the 'full-time' employees.

A lot of my students were forced to accept the deal. They explained that although they had been working there for years (usually 10 to 12 hours a day, 5 1/2 days a week), they had no right to permanent status--and had never had insurance or other benefits.