Young Workers · Employing Minors
Young Worker Employment
What is a young worker?
- Shorter hours, a night-work ban, and a ban on hazardous work apply
- Contract in the worker’s own name, wages paid directly to them
- Proof of age and a parental consent form must be kept on file
Employing young workers isn’t a question of whether you can hire them. It means schedules and job assignments have to change first. Even in the same hall doing the same work, the hours you can schedule, the overtime limits you can apply, and the machines and chemicals you can assign differ from those for adults. That’s why hiring young workers doesn’t end as HR paperwork. It becomes a question of limiting the store manager’s authority to set schedules.
Children under 15 generally cannot be employed unless they hold an employment permit from the Ministry of Employment and Labor. Workers aged 15 to 17 are limited to 7 hours a day and 35 hours a week. Even by mutual agreement, overtime is capped at 1 hour a day and 5 hours a week, versus the 12-hour weekly overtime limit for adults. Night work (10 p.m. to 6 a.m.) and holiday work are allowed only with both the worker’s consent and the Minister of Employment and Labor’s approval, and approval is rarely granted in practice. On the other hand, the minimum wage and weekly holiday allowance apply exactly as they do to adults, and wages can be reduced during a probation period only for contracts of one year or longer, so this cannot be used for short-term part-time jobs.
People often use “minor” and “young worker” interchangeably, but the rules split by age: under 19 is a minor, and under 18 is a young worker. After 18, the limits on working hours and night work lift, but until 19 you must still sign the employment contract in the worker’s own name and pay wages directly to them. A guardian’s consent form is not authority to sign the contract on the worker’s behalf. It is only a document proving that consent was given.
Problems on the ground usually come from two places. One is a parent signing the contract and receiving the pay in their own account. Even with the family’s consent, this is cited as a violation of the direct-payment rule. The other is the line 'they asked to work more.' Night work by a young worker is unlawful without approval, even if the worker wants it, and the penalties include imprisonment. A single closing shift that a store manager extended by 30 minutes with good intentions can turn into a labor complaint, so it’s safer to keep schedule-approval authority at headquarters. Age thresholds and working-hour limits may be amended, so check the latest statutes.
Jongmu KimCorporate talent development and job skills specialist
Kyungtae KimHR expert · Organizational culture and HR strategy consultantThe Labor Standards Act protects young workers with a minimum employment age and an employment permit, proof of age kept on file, the right of minors to sign their own employment contracts and claim their own wages, working-hour limits, restrictions on night and holiday work, and a ban on hazardous or dangerous work.
Consider a hypothetical case: Company A runs 12 company-owned bakery cafés. Of its 140 employees, 90 are part-timers, and 22 of them are under 18. Over two months, 2 labor office complaints had come in over closing-shift night work and wages paid into parents’ accounts.
- When the HR manager pulled three months of schedules for 12 stores, 9 of the 22 workers under 18 were on closing shifts running past 10 p.m.
- When we went through 22 employment contracts, 7 had been signed in a parent’s name. The store manager said, “Their mother filled it out for them.” All 22 were rewritten in the workers’ own names and handed to them.
- We moved the closing shift’s end to 9:30 p.m. and locked the scheduling system so workers under 18 can only be scheduled within 7 hours a day and 35 hours a week. We hired 4 more adult part-timers, which raised labor costs by KRW 1.9 million (≈ US$1,420) a month.
- For the 5 workers whose pay had been going to a parent’s account, we switched to accounts in their own names and now send pay slips to their own phones, unifying the payment channel.
- Six months later, night-shift assignments fell from 9 workers to 0, both complaints were closed with corrections completed, and the share of under-18 part-timers staying 3+ months rose from 41% to 68%.