00:06If you're early in your career at a big Korean company, the type of contract you're offered
00:11matters more than ever this year. Lodge employers added 40,000 new permanent hires and 70,000
00:19fixed-term hires. Fixed-term workers now make up almost 30% of the workforce at Korea's
00:25biggest companies. That share has grown every year for five years straight. The two-year
00:31rule meant to protect you might actually be working against you. It's Wednesday, September
00:3730th. Let's talk about a trend affecting young professionals in Korea. Korea's Ministry of
00:43Employment and Labor released its 2026 employment-type disclosure today, covering 4,205 companies
00:51with 300 or more employees. The law requires these large employers to disclose how many
00:58of their workers are permanent versus fixed-term, precisely to track trends like this one.
01:04Current law also requires employers to convert fixed-term workers to permanent status after
01:09two years of continuous employment, a rule meant to push companies toward stable hiring.
01:15Here's what the numbers show. Directly employed workers at these companies rose to four
01:21million 983,000 this year, up 107,000 from last year, with fixed-term hires accounting for 67,000 of
01:31that increase, versus just 41,000 for permanent hires. Fixed-term workers now hold a 28.3% share of
01:39the workforce at large companies, up 0.7 percentage points, while the permanent worker share slipped to
01:4671.7 percent. Over the past five years, fixed-term headcount jumped from 934,000 to 1,412,000,
01:57a gain of 478,000, while permanent headcount grew by a smaller 409,000, from 3,161,000 to 3
02:08,570,000.
02:10The health care and welfare sector alone added 44,000 workers this year, roughly half of the
02:18entire industry-wide increase, and most of those new hires came in as fixed-term or part-time.
02:24In shipbuilding, subcontracted workers now make up 64.6% of on-site staff, up 1.6 percentage points,
02:34meaning two out of every three workers on a shipyard floor are subcontractors, rather than
02:40direct hires. Labor ministry officials say they're reviewing reforms to the two-year conversion
02:46rule, after data suggested some employers swap out fixed-term workers before hitting that threshold,
02:52instead of converting them. So what does this mean for young professionals in Korea?
02:58Earlier, we said the type of contract you're offered matters more than ever.
03:02Here's what that actually means for you.
03:05If you're on a fixed-term contract right now, don't assume two years automatically leads
03:10to a permanent offer. Some employers rotate people out specifically to avoid that obligation,
03:16so ask directly about renewal and conversion history at your company.
03:21Watch three things. Whether the labor ministry's fixed-term survey leads to an actual rule change,
03:27whether health care and shipbuilding keep leading the fixed-term hiring trend,
03:32and whether your own sector's disclosure data shows the same shift when next year's numbers
03:36come out. That's today's AI Prism, Early Careers. This episode was produced with AI assistance based
03:44on Seoul Economic Daily reporting and reviewed by a human editor. AI Prism is a WANIFRA award-winning
03:52series. We'll be back tomorrow. You've been listening to AI Prism from Seoul Economic Daily.
