South Korea Has New Child Care Leave Provisions

South Korea now offers child care leave, which allows all parents to take up to a year of unpaid leave if they have a child under the age of 8. It’s also possible to take up to a year of reduced hours with reduced pay, and the employee can substitute some of the leave for reduced hours, which ultimately can allow up to two years of reduced hours. The unpaid leave is compensated with government subsidies that are paid through employment insurance, and these have recently been expanded. 

“In order to encourage fathers to take child care leave as well as mothers, there are enhanced subsidies when both parents take leave during the first year after a baby is born. You can actually get a higher ceiling on the subsidies that you can receive if both parents take some leave, with certain caps,” said Christopher Mandel, an attorney with Yulchon in Seoul.

An Attempt to Counteract Low Birth Rates

The expanded child care leave, combined with the push for more fathers to take leave, is due to South Korea’s position as the country with the lowest birth rate in the world. The reworked leave compensation is designed to address this.

“It's quite a clever mechanism, which means the longer you take off, the more you'll actually get paid for taking the time off,” said Fatim Jumabhoy, managing partner at Herbert Smith Freehills in Singapore. “It's really intended to encourage both parents, but particularly fathers, to take some time off after their children are born by using financial incentives.”

Whether the new leave will actually work toward that goal remains to be seen. Wage caps mean it is unlikely that an employee taking child care leave will receive their full salary during that time.

“It's a wage replacement based on what you earn, but with a pretty low cap, so if you’re well paid, you're not going to keep receiving your full salary,” Mandel said.

Be Aware of Changes

Employees should be aware of the new changes to the child care leave policies and the subsidies that are available to them. Employers, meanwhile, should be aware of their legal obligations.

Employers “have to properly consider requests for accommodations. If an employee requests an adjustment to their work hours, to restrict overtime, to work flexibly or for other measures to support their child care needs, employers should be agreeing to them unless there are strong, commercial reasons why they can’t be accommodated,” Jumabhoy said.

Employers also need to keep in mind that refusing accommodations could potentially lead to court cases, as was the case in a recent matter heard by the Supreme Court of Korea.

“In that case, the employer refused to honor a prior accommodation not to work difficult hours and dismissed the employee. The court held this dismissal unfair, noting that the obligation to try to accommodate requests was a meaningful one and that there should be a justifiable reason for any refusal,” Jumabhoy said. 

Other options, such as offering flexible hours or work location options, could also help working parents.

Katie Nadworny is a freelance writer in Istanbul.