Update (December 14th, 2017)
Thanks to a reader who asked me about updated information on this post, I found out that a full translation of the most recent law and enforcement decree mentioned in the text below is available online now. Visit this government website and search “employment security act”. You will get the act and the enforcement decree in English. Article numbers in the post are still valid.
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(This post was written in 2008. The content is outdated. Check the update on the top.)
After spending a couple of hours on the web searching, I only found a vague answer that registration is required based on employment security act. I had to read and translate a part of the act to get better answers. The following is a loose excerpt translation of the parts of the act that cover requirements for registration to open a headhunting company in Korea.
According the the act, headhunters or recruiting agencies fall under the category of fee charging placement service and a person who wants to establish a recruitment or headhunting company should register to city mayors, county chiefs or head of Ku (district) administrative offices. If the business is overseas recruitment, the registration should be made with the Minister of Labor. (article 19, the employment security act)
Requirements for registration are as follows (article 21, the enforcement decree of the employment security act)
1. If an applicant is a natural person, he/she should have one of the following qualifications.
2. If an applicant is a legal person, the entitiy should be a company with a paid-in capital of not less than 50 million KRW and at least two of its executives should have one of the following qualifications.
a. one with a national license of job consultant (grade 1 or 2) based on “national license act”
b. one with two or more years of experience of working in the fields of job counseling, job guidance, vocational training, and other couseling related to job placement in job placement offices, vocational ability development centers, schools, and youth organizations.
c. one with the license of certified labor affairs consultant based on the certified labor affairs consultant act
d. one with two or more years of experience of working as a full-time union official in a company-based labor union with 100 or more members or a federation or a confederation of labor unions.
e. one with two or more years of experience of working for labor management in workplaces with 300 or more regular workers
f. one who worked for two or more years as a government official in the central or local governments.
g. one with two or more years of teaching experience with a licence of teacher based on the elementary and secondary education act.
3. Applicants should have an office of at least 33 square meters (legal person) or 20 square meters (natural person) (article 18, enforcement decree of the employment security act).
Hi Sunny,
I am conducting an extensive research project on Korea’s labour law and employment law, specifically as it pertains to staffing firms and temporary employment, and have some questions that I’ve been unable to find information on. I’m hoping that you might be able to help me answer some of these questions or perhaps point me in the right direction as far as information is concerned. Are there any reliable websites or resources that might be able to assist me?
Thank you for your time.
Regards,
Allison Hill
Hi. Allison
You can start by reading the law governing leased or temporary workers. Go to http://www.moel.go.kr/english/ (English website of the Ministry of Employment and Labor) and find the Act on the Protection, etc, of Dispatched Workers at the left side section called Labor law. The act is under the category labor standards.
Frankly speaking, your chance of finding a useful information in English for your topic is very low. Korean government is not very active in producing quality English documents for labor-related matters. Most of English documents published by the government is just PR materials or do not provide extensive information on any given topic.
Just think about it. If you google Korean labor law, my humble personal blog is at the top of the search results but government or any academia sites cannot be found. This is a telling sign of how difficult it is to find a good and relevant English information from authoritative sources.
I wish you good luck, anyway, with finding what you are looking for.
Regards
Sunny