Legislation That Saved Workers on the Brink

A dump-truck driver who worked at the Pyeongchang Winter Olympics main stadium demolition site went three months without receiving his wages or equipment-rental fees. He kept showing up after payments stopped, buying fuel on credit until his debts overwhelmed his family. When he sued for the money, the contractor’s representative, despite withholding 7.8 billion won, said there was nothing to pay. The opposing lawyer warned that the case could take five or six years to reach the Supreme Court. The father of two schoolchildren eventually took his own life.

The film “Veteran” turns the grievance of a beaten truck driver seeking unpaid money into the satisfying punishment of a chaebol heir. Reality is harsher and more structural, the article argues. Subcontractors risk losing future work if they report nonpayment, and courts struggle to establish the facts when contracts are not even written. Official Labor Ministry statistics record nearly 3 million victims of wage arrears across all industries over the past decade. They do not include many construction-equipment workers or operators of site cafeterias, who are not classified as workers under the Labor Standards Act.

Construction payments pass from the client through the main contractor, subcontractors and lower-tier subcontractors before reaching workers. If an intermediary account fails or faces provisional seizure, the money at the bottom disappears first. The government’s “Subcontractor Guardian” payment system did not solve that problem because funds still passed through ordinary bank accounts. Since 2021, the system has seen 1.6 trillion won in unpaid or delayed payments. By contrast, sites using “Arrears-Free e,” which transfers money directly from clients to those who performed the work, recorded zero arrears while disbursing 100 trillion won over five years.

A partial revision of the Framework Act on the Construction Industry, passed by the National Assembly last month, makes direct payment the central reform. The article credits lawmakers including Yeom Tae-young, who used data showing zero arrears to expose the old system’s flaws, and the Land Ministry under Minister Kim Yun-deok for incorporating labor and civic demands. The new law is intended to block leakage before punishment becomes necessary and could also stop the practice of splitting retirement contribution payments to avoid social-insurance costs. But the columnist says implementation will determine whether the reform works, and calls for protection to reach small private projects and irregular workers.