On May 9 2013, the National Human Rights Commission of Korea (NHRCK) decided to make recommendations to the Ministry of Employment and Labor and the Ministry of Strategy and Finance to introduce measures to increase the compliance rate of the Minimum Wage Act.
Some of the recommended measures by the Commission include 1) limiting the access to the Employment Information System (www.work.go.kr) of employers who infringe upon the Minimum Wage Act, and 2) suspending the provision of the Employment Support Subsidies to the violators of the Act.
According to a statistics presented by the Statistics Korea, the proportion of workers who earn less than the minimum wage is fairly high at around 12 percent.
The Korean labor market trends are troubling as the labor market is being further polarized, with the number of middle-income jobs falling, while the number of high-income jobs increasing. It is worrying that people who hold low-income jobs have difficulties climbing up the social ladder. With such trends in mind, the NHRCK concluded that jobs that pay less than the minimum wage is one of the major factors that deteriorate the quality of life of laborers.
Despite various efforts by the government to reduce the number of people who take home less than the minimum wage, the figure is stubbornly high. This prompted the NHRCK to consider measures and steps to improve the labor rights as a whole and to reconsider the intent of the concept of the minimum wage system designed to protect workers from exploitation and businesses from unfair competition.
