Non-regular Workers
비정규직
Non-regular workers (bijeonggyujik) is a Korean social category denoting workers in precarious employment, fixed-term, part-time, dispatched, and special-contract, who lack the job security and benefits of regular (jeonggyujik) employees. The category surged after the 1997 IMF crisis, when labor market flexibilization accelerated; by August 2025, non-regular workers reached 9.29 million, or 41.5% of all wage earners, among the highest rates in the OECD. With hourly wages at roughly 67% of regular workers' pay and far lower social insurance coverage, the regular/non-regular divide is the central axis of South Korea's labor market dualization and income inequality.
Sources
- Wikipedia (KO) Korean Wikipedia article defining non-regular workers, their legal categories, history since the 1996 labor law and 1997 IMF crisis, and types (fixed-term, part-time, dispatched, special employment)
- Wikipedia (EN) English Wikipedia on contingent work as a global category of insecure employment relationships, providing international context
- klsi.org Korea Labor & Society Institute (한국노동사회연구소) Issue Paper 2025-16 by Kim Yoo-sun, reporting August 2025 Statistics Korea data: 9.29 million non-regular workers (41.5% of wage earners), hourly wage gap at 67% of regular workers, and worsening wage inequality
- keia.org Korea Economic Institute of America analysis by Randall S. Jones (March 2022): labor market dualism as structural segmentation between regular and non-regular workers; 42% non-regular share in 2021, second-highest temporary employment rate in OECD, wage gap and social insurance disparities
- yna.co.kr Yonhap News (2017) retrospective on the IMF crisis legacy: non-regular worker ratio surged from 43.2% (1996) to 52.1% (2000), structural transformation of Korean employment from lifetime jobs to precarious work