“Government accelerates push for ‘framework act on working persons’… critics warn of possible unconstitutionality and clear limits”, 10 February 2026

The government has moved swiftly to introduce a legislative presumption of worker status — aimed at bringing platform workers such as delivery riders and freelancers within the scope of legal protection — by holding a public policy forum to advance the proposed reform. (…) The presumption of worker status would treat a person providing labour as a ‘worker’ if they are found to be economically dependent on and subordinate to a user, thereby granting protection in the first instance. The proposed Framework Act on Working Persons seeks to apply labour rights and social security standards to all individuals who provide labour, beyond existing distinctions between employees, special-type workers and platform workers.

… Professor Kwon Oh-seong of Yonsei Law School described the introduction of the presumption as “a redesign of the judicial reasoning structure, requiring courts to begin from the premise that a person is a worker, rather than not a worker, when determining employment status”. He stressed that employers, who are in a superior informational position, should bear the burden of proving otherwise, in order to prevent employment status determinations from being shaped by the formal structure or appearance of contracts.

… Jo Hyun-joo, a lawyer at the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions’ Legal Centre, cautioned that the proposed framework law “implicitly assumes that ‘working persons’ are not covered by the Labour Standards Act, and may therefore send a strong signal that they are not workers under that Act”. (…) She reiterated labour groups’ position that platform workers and similar categories should instead be actively interpreted and protected within the existing Labour Standards Act framework.