Mega Special Zone bill draws labor backlash over deregulation
The Korea Herald 31 July 2026
The government is preparing legislation that would ease labor regulations in planned Mega Special Zones for advanced industries, which has been drawing strong opposition from labor groups, according to local media reports.
Local daily Hankyoreh reported Thursday, citing government and National Assembly sources, that the Industry Ministry plans to submit a bill on the designation and management of Mega Special Zones in early August. This includes a semiconductor cluster in the southwestern Honam region.
The proposed law would provide designated areas with regulatory exemptions as well as financial, tax, research and development and workforce support as part of the government’s push to foster advanced industries and promote balanced regional development.
Among the most contentious provisions is a plan to extend the maximum period for hiring fixed-term workers from the current two years to four years within the special zones.
Under the current Act on the Protection of Fixed-Term and Part-Time Employees, workers employed on fixed-term contracts for more than two years must generally be converted to permanent status. Previous conservative administrations sought to extend the limit to four years but failed amid opposition from labor groups.
For research and development personnel, the government is considering applying a selective working-hours system that could allow employees to work beyond the standard
52-hour weekly cap.
The bill would also broaden the range of jobs in which dispatched workers can be used, while exempting high-income workers in the special zones from overtime pay requirements if their income falls within the top 3 percent.
Labor unions criticized the plan as a rollback of worker protections.
The Korean Confederation of Trade Unions expressed concern that the bill would introduce in one package a series of labor deregulation measures long sought by business groups, while accusing the government of using the designated zones as a testing ground before potentially expanding the measures nationwide.
“Competitiveness in the high-tech industry is not created through the sacrifice of labor rights, but through their protection and stable employment,” the KCTU said in a statement Friday.
“The KCTU will not allow the Mega Special Zones to become a laboratory for testing labor deregulation,” it added, calling on the government to withdraw the deregulatory provisions.
The Federation of Korean Trade Unions, another umbrella labor group, expressed similar concerns.
“Industrial competitiveness does not come from long working hours and the excessive use of nonregular workers,” FKTU spokesperson Choi Jong-hwan told Hankyoreh.
“If minimum social safeguards begin to be dismantled one by one, it is only a matter of time before that spreads more broadly. The basic labor rights we have worked hard to build will inevitably be undermined.”
https://www.koreaherald.com/article/10827052
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