The civic group Workplace Gapjil Emergency number asked the polling company Global Research to survey 1 thousand workers. As a result, 35.1% said they are not guaranteed paid leave on Labor Day this year. The survey period was from April 1 to 8. By job type, 60.0% of day laborers, 59.3% of freelancers and specially employed workers, 57.0% of part-timers, and 40.0% of dispatched service workers said they cannot rest. The more unstable the employment type was, the weaker the guarantee of Labor Day leave was. The group explained that these results show a blind spot in labor law protection. However, the article also included that this year Labor Day was designated as a public holiday by law, so it became a day off for all citizens. Even so, Workplace Gapjil Emergency number pointed out that there are still many workers outside labor law. There was also a claim that labor law should be applied more broadly to all workers.
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Before the number 35%, what you should look at first is 'who is inside the law'
If you only glance at the article, your first thought is probably, 'It is Labor Day, so why are so many people still unable to rest?' But to read this number correctly, you first need to see who Labor Day in Korea was originally a holiday for. If you understand this, you can tell whether it is simply a company choice problem or a boundary problem in the system itself.
For a long time, Labor Day in Korea was not designed as 'a public holiday when all citizens rest,' but as a paid holiday given to workers under the Labor Standards Act. Simply put, the right to rest was divided not by 'whether a person works hard,' but by which group the law classified that person into. So even if people did similar work in the same building, regular employees could rest while freelancers or contract workers could not.
In this survey, it is not a coincidence that day laborers, part-timers, freelancers, and specially employed workers were less likely to be guaranteed paid leave on Labor Day. That is because the starting point of the rights gap is not the value of labor but legal status and the law that applies. If you understand this far, this news starts to read not as a simple complaint case, but as an example showing where the boundary of Korean labor law is drawn.
The difference in Labor Day rights starts not from 'who works harder' but from 'who the law sees as a worker.'
So when you look at the survey numbers, you should look not only at job type but also at contract type and the scope of legal coverage together.
Even if people worked together, Labor Day rules were divided like this
| Group | Main legal position | Labor Day paid holiday | Why was there a difference? |
|---|---|---|---|
| Private company workers | Workers under the Labor Standards Act | Applied in principle | Because it was included in the legal framework of Labor Day law and the Labor Standards Act |
| Public officials and teachers | Public law status relationship | In the past, not directly applied | Run under a separate public official and education law system, not private labor law |
| Freelancers | Often classified as sole proprietors or subcontract contracts | Mostly unstable | Often left out of protection because they are not workers by contract name |
| Special employment workers | The boundary between workers and self-employed people | Different by job group and judgment | Even if there is real dependency, it is not legally recognized all at once |
| Domestic workers | Excluded from the Labor Standards Act | Excluded from application | The law itself sets them as an exception |
| Workers at workplaces with fewer than 5 employees | They are workers, but this group has weak enforcement in the field | Labor Day itself applies | They have legal rights, but actual protection is easy to shake because of staff shortages and weak labor management |
In Korea, Labor Day was not originally a public holiday for everyone
The confusion now did not appear suddenly. If you look at what May 1 came to mean in Korea and how it became the current system, you can understand why Labor Day and public holidays moved separately too.
Step 1: 1886, the start of world Labor Day
The symbolic beginning of Labor Day was the struggle for the 8-hour workday in Chicago, United States. The May Day tradition that came from there spread to many countries in the world, and Korea's Labor Day is also connected to this international flow.
Step 2: 1923, the May 1 celebration also began in Korea
In Korea too, the May 1 Labor Day celebration began during the Japanese colonial period. So Labor Day was originally a day with the language of the international labor movement.
Step 3: 1963, the state included it by law
When the Supreme Council for National Reconstruction made the Act on the Designation of Workers' Day, Labor Day entered the national system. But at that time, it was less of 'a public holiday for everyone' and more of a paid holiday mainly for a specific group of workers.
Step 4: For a while, March 10 and May 1 moved separately
For a period, Korea had a mismatch between May 1, the date of the international May Day tradition, and the date of 'Workers' Day' managed by the state. If you know this period, you can see that Labor Day was handled separately in Korea in political and institutional ways.
Step 5: In 1994, the date changed back to May 1
From 1994, the legal date was set back to May 1. You can think of this as the time when the basic framework of the Labor Day we know today was established.
Step 6: In 2025, the name also changes to 'Labor Day'
With the full revision of the law in November 2025, the name changed from the Act on the Designation of Workers' Day to the Act on the Designation of Labor Day. The change in wording is not just a simple symbol. It can be understood as a move for the system to follow the broader reality of 'labor' rather than the narrower term 'worker'.
Labor Day and legal public holidays may have similar names, but they work differently
| Category | Labor Day (existing system) | General legal public holiday |
|---|---|---|
| Legal basis | Act on the Designation of Labor Day | Public Holidays Act · Regulations on Public Holidays of Government Offices |
| Basic nature | A paid holiday given to workers under the Labor Standards Act | An official public holiday set by the state |
| Who it applies to | Originally focused on workers under the Labor Standards Act | Government offices, schools, and the public sector are the base, and the private sector follows related rules |
| Public officials and teachers | Direct application was unclear or excluded | Directly affected under the public holiday system |
| Private company workplaces | Whether it is a paid holiday is the key point | Actual attendance at work is possible, but there can be issues about holiday work compensation |
| Meaning of this year's change | Started as a holiday for a specific group | By being included in the public holiday system, it became much more like a ‘holiday for all citizens’. |
Why do people with unstable jobs end up getting even less rest?
If we look one step deeper here, the problem is not just one line in the law. Korea’s labor market is often called a dual structure. Simply put, it means there is an inner market with strong protection, like big companies, the public sector, and regular workers, and an outer market with weak protection, like small and medium businesses, tiny workplaces, and non-regular workers.
Paid leave on Labor Day follows this structure too. Even if the law writes down the right, small workplaces often have less room to replace workers and weaker labor management. Dispatch and outsourced work sites are even more complicated. In many cases, the work is actually done at one company, but the contract is made with another company, so the side that workers must ask for their rights from becomes farther away.
So in the survey, 60.0% of daily workers, 59.3% of freelancers and specially employed workers, and 57.0% of part-time workers said they do not get guaranteed paid leave, and that is not just a simple coincidence. The structure that the more unstable the job is, the more unclear the law’s application becomes, and the more unclear the law’s application becomes, the weaker the holiday right becomes showed up clearly in the numbers. If you understand this part, then even when similar labor news comes out later, it becomes much easier to judge ‘why the same kinds of groups always get shaken first.’
The rate of Labor Day non-guarantee is not just a simple welfare gap. It is the result of the labor market’s dual structure and blind spots in legal coverage overlapping together.
Especially for indirect employment and tiny workplaces, the big problem is not so much ‘there is no right,’ but rather ‘it is hard to push for that right in real life.’
Non-regular work and platform labor are no longer just an ‘exceptional minority’
The reason Labor Day blind spots keep becoming news is that these groups are not small at all in Korea’s labor market. When you look at the numbers, you can understand much faster how wide this problem really is.
These are the people usually meant by ‘workers outside labor law’ these days
| Group | Contract type | Typical examples | Rights often left out |
|---|---|---|---|
| Platform workers | App-based calls and brokerage | Delivery rider, designated driver | Holidays and extra pay under the Labor Standards Act, employer responsibility recognized |
| Special employment worker | Contract work or sole proprietor form | Study material teacher, insurance planner, loan counselor | Worker status recognized, paid holidays, protection from dismissal |
| Dependent self-employed worker | Formally self-employed, but strongly dependent on a specific business operator | Exclusive delivery driver, etc. | Full application of labor law, right to collective bargaining |
| Daily and very short-hour worker | Short contracts and irregular work | Daily construction worker, short-term part-time job | Holiday guarantee, pay calculation, job stability |
So this news should be read not as 'they did not give holidays' but as a question of 'who the law sees as a worker.'
If you look this far, the key point of this news is not simply that 'there are many bad companies.' What matters more is who Korea's holiday system and labor law have treated as the default. It fits the traditional office worker model fairly well, but for people on the border like freelancers, special employment workers, and platform workers, rights have kept coming late.
So when you read similar news later, you can look at two things together. First, whether that group is legally classified as workers. Second, even if they have rights by law, whether they have the power to actually ask for them at work. If you look at these two things together, it explains 'why it is the same May 1, but some people can rest and some people cannot.'
In summary, this year's Labor Day became a public holiday, so the system became wider, but the problem is not completely over. The best way to read this news is to go one step further than asking, 'It became a day off for all citizens, so why are there still gaps?' and also look at what legal classifications and labor market structure create those gaps. If you keep this view, you can read the next labor news much more clearly.
The key question is not only 'why did they not rest?' but 'how is that person legally classified?'
Separate from the expansion of public holidays, you should keep watching whether recognition of worker status and enforcement at workplaces change together.
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