Unpaid Wages and Unfair Dismissal: Two Routes

When something goes wrong at work in Korea, the first task is not gathering evidence. It is classifying the case, because unpaid wages and unfair dismissal go to different institutions, follow different procedures, and run on different clocks.

Get that wrong and you can win the argument you started while quietly losing the one you did not.

Nationality is not an input here. Article 6 says so directly.

Article 6 first

The Labor Standards Act prohibits discriminatory treatment of working conditions on grounds of nationality. Where a person is an employee, wages, severance and dismissal are judged by Korean labour law — E-7, E-9, F-2, F-4 and F-6 alike.

What differs for a foreign worker is not the standard. It is that a labour problem and an immigration problem arrive together, which is the subject of the afternoon guide.

Unpaid wages: the labour office

Unpaid salary, overtime, night and holiday premiums, unused leave pay, severance and final settlement all go to the local labour office as a complaint to a labour inspector.

The inspector investigates both sides and compares the contract, the wage records, attendance records, bank transfers and the employer’s account. Where arrears are confirmed, the employer can be directed to pay, and a breach of the Act can lead into criminal process.

Complaint and accusation are not the same thing

Starting with a criminal accusation is not required. In practice a complaint, confirmation of the arrears, and a direction to pay is the ordinary path, with criminal or civil steps following if payment still does not come.

Evidence decides wage cases

Employers dispute wage claims with three sentences: you did not work those hours, nobody instructed that overtime, we already paid you in cash. Each is answered by records rather than recollection.

Gather these while still employed if you can. Access to systems tends to end on the same day the dispute begins.

Confirmation of unpaid wages is the document that unlocks the rest

Where an inspector confirms arrears, a confirmation of unpaid wages and the employer can be issued. It is not a counselling note — it evidences the employer and the amount for what comes next.

arrears confirmed
  → confirmation issued
  → simplified substitute payment, or civil enforcement

The substitute payment is a backstop, not a guarantee

Under the Wage Claim Guarantee Act the state can pay confirmed arrears the employer has not settled.

For a former employee using the labour office route, the complaint must as a rule be filed within one year of the day after leaving.

Unfair dismissal: a different body, and a hard deadline

Whether a dismissal was justified goes to the Labor Relations Commission, and the application must be made within three months of the dismissal.

But check the headcount before you plan around it

The Labor Standards Act applies principally at workplaces with five or more ordinary employees, and the Commission’s unfair dismissal relief sits inside that framework.

So the sequence is not “dismissed → Commission”. It is:

headcount at the workplace
  → does the Act's dismissal framework apply?
  → which remedy is actually available

Below the threshold, advance notice obligations and civil claims arising from the termination can still be considered — and unpaid wages remain a separate matter that does not turn on the same question.

Written notice is a requirement, not a formality

Article 27 requires the employer to give the grounds and the date in writing, and ties the effect of the dismissal to that notice.

So “don’t come in tomorrow”, delivered verbally, is not a clean dismissal. Whether an electronic message satisfies the requirement in a given case depends on its content and how it was delivered — the question being whether the employee could clearly ascertain the grounds and the timing.

Notice pay is not a price for dismissing you

Thirty days’ notice, or thirty days’ ordinary wages in lieu, satisfies Article 26. It says nothing about whether there was a justifiable reason.

30 days' pay received   ≠   the dismissal was lawful

Accepting it concedes nothing, and it is not a settlement of the dismissal question. Believing otherwise is the most common reason the three-month window passes unused.

What the Commission can order

Where a dismissal is found unfair, the ordinary remedies are reinstatement and payment of wages equivalent to what would have been earned during the dismissal period.

An employee who does not want to return can instead be awarded a monetary payment of not less than that wage equivalent. And where reinstatement has become impossible — a contract term ending, or retirement age reached — the Commission can still rule on the dismissal and order payment.

The two tracks, side by side

Three files, kept apart

Not one folder called “the problem”:

The third file is why a foreign worker cannot simply run this the way a Korean colleague would — and the reason people lose one case while concentrating on another. What the two labour tracks look like when a period of stay is running against them, whether reporting an employer is safe, and which multilingual route to use is the other half of today’s pair.

How the underlying entitlements were calculated in the first place is in reading your Korean payslip, and the terms that should have governed the dismissal are in your Korean employment contract.