South Korea Guarantees 18 Months Paternity Leave For Working Parents

South Korea’s labor minister said on Monday that the government was planning to extend the leave period for working parents from the current one year to one year and six months.

The Ministry of Employment and Labor also said it plans to increase the quota of foreign workers with non-professional work visas this year to ease pandemic-related labor shortages.

This plan was included in this year’s club activity plan report submitted by Minister of Labor Lee Jong-shik to President Yoon Suk-yeol.

First, the government is pushing to guarantee each parent up to 18 months of parental leave if both are working.

According to government officials, the plan is a government effort to encourage more couples to apply for maternity or parental leave in response to the country’s extremely low birth rate. The Department of Labor has also decided to issue E-9 visas to a record 110,000 foreign workers annually this year.

The decision comes at a time when an industry that relies heavily on migrant workers is facing labor shortages amid the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and tightened border controls.

The government also plans to amend relevant laws to allow foreign workers to stay for more than 10 years without going through the exit and re-entry process to guarantee their skills.

The Labor Department will also pursue policies to reduce workplace deaths or injuries by forcing companies to implement risk assessment systems.

Starting this year, the government will require companies with 300 or more employees to adopt this system, and plans to expand its application to small and medium-sized companies with 5 or more employees by 2025. The government will investigate whether such systems are in place in the event of workplace casualties.

The labor ministry plans to set up a committee within this month to review the performance-based compensation system.

The committee is made up of human resources managers, employees, labor law or industrial relations experts, and government officials.