South Korea Is Designing a Pay Floor for an Estimated 8 Million Couriers, Riders and Gig Workers

South Korea's Ministry of Employment and Labor has commissioned research toward a minimum pay system for an estimated 8 million dependent contractors and platform workers who sit outside the minimum wage today. That group includes delivery riders and parcel couriers, who are often paid per job rather than by the hour. The short answer to the question most workers will ask is no, nothing changes on your next payout. This is a design stage, and the ministry will decide only after a public deliberation process with the groups affected. For workers following the story on Metaintro, the useful pages are the statute, the official pay notices and the government's own survey data, because they show what a worker is owed today and what could change. Here is what the ministry is building, what the law says now and what riders and couriers can do while the design work runs.

What Exactly Is the Labor Ministry Designing, and Is It a Law Yet?

It is not a law, and it is not a regulation either. The ministry has put two pieces of research in motion. The first, a policy study titled a minimum pay introduction plan for new forms of employment, went out to tender in July alongside a second study on how Korea sets its minimum wage, and both are due to run for five months, through December. That first study covers specially employed workers, platform workers and freelancers who fall outside the Labor Standards Act, and it will design how pay would be calculated and applied, and look at similar minimum pay systems in Korea and overseas.

The second piece is a field survey. By early September the ministry had ordered a study titled a fact-finding survey to review and design a minimum pay system, which will look at income levels, how pay is set and how costs are shared in each priority occupation.

The route matters. Rather than widening the definition of a worker under the Minimum Wage Act, the ministry plans to set a separate pay floor. Expanding minimum wage coverage would mean amending the Labor Standards Act or the Minimum Wage Act, so the ministry will instead consider a separate standard set through enforcement guidelines and similar tools, with a final decision to come after a public deliberation process with the groups affected.

Why Are Riders and Couriers Left Out of the Minimum Wage Today?

The answer sits in the first page of the statute. The Minimum Wage Act borrows its definition of employee, employer and wages from Article 2 of the Labor Standards Act, so anyone not recognized as an employee under that law falls outside it. Platform delivery riders have generally been treated as independent contractors, not employees, partly because they can choose whether to accept or reject delivery orders.

The Act does already contain a tool for piece rates. Its Article 5 allows that where wages are usually fixed on a piecework basis, the minimum wage may be determined separately for each piecework, as set by presidential decree. Because the Act takes its definition of employee from the Labor Standards Act, that clause still covers only employees.

That is why the debate keeps returning to the Minimum Wage Commission, a body of 27 members split evenly between worker, employer and public interest seats. On June 11 it voted on applying a separate minimum wage to piece-rate workers for 2027, and the proposal failed by 11 votes to 15, with one invalid ballot. As a result, a separate minimum wage for couriers, delivery riders, designated drivers and study-material teachers will not be part of this year's deliberation.

The ministry is building a separate pay floor for workers paid by the job, not by the hour, because the Minimum Wage Act only reaches people the law counts as employees.

What Will the Survey of About 1,000 Workers Actually Measure?

This is the part of the plan that could change what a rider is owed, so it is worth reading closely. The survey will cover a sample of about 1,000 piece-rate workers, and it will use questionnaires, records of the work provided and pay statements to find out what those workers really earn.

The survey will count more than delivery time alone. It will measure time spent providing services, including waiting and travel time, and then turn income into an hourly figure. It will also factor in the cost of doing the job, with fuel and communications expenses named as examples, when it works out real hourly pay and compares it with the current minimum wage.

For a rider, that method is the whole argument. If waiting between orders and riding back to a pickup zone count as working time, and if fuel and phone costs are counted, a day that looks well paid on gross fees may work out lower per hour. The survey will then compare that hourly figure with the minimum wage, and the ministry will use that comparison to review how a minimum pay system could be introduced.

What Is the Minimum Wage Now, and What Will It Be Next Year?

The benchmark the survey will use is published by the ministry. For 2026 the minimum wage is 10,320 won an hour, or 2,156,880 won a month based on a 40-hour week and 209 hours a month, and it applies to every workplace regardless of industry. That rate was a rise of 290 won, or 2.9% on the 2025 level.

Next year's rate is already final. The Minimum Wage Commission set the 2027 minimum wage at 10,700 won an hour in July, after the employers' proposal beat the workers' proposal by 17 votes to 11. The new hourly rate is 380 won above this year's, and the ministry's final notice put the monthly equivalent at 2,236,300 won from January 1.

The 2027 notice also closed one door for piece-rate workers. No separate minimum wage will apply to them, and they remain under the same 10,700 won standard. The Korean Confederation of Trade Unions objected that the minimum wage should also cover workers paid by the job, and the ministry turned that objection down.

Which Jobs Are Likely to Be Covered First?

The ministry has not published a final list. The priority occupations for the review are expected to include delivery and parcel riders, home-visit workers, designated drivers, care and housekeeping service workers, after-school instructors and home-visit study-material teachers. Treat that as the likely starting shortlist, not a promise.

The labor minister, Kim Young-hoon, has set his own marker. He wants a minimum pay system applied at least to platform workers such as delivery riders in next year's minimum wage round, and the ministry plans to look at how to introduce the system in the Minimum Wage Commission's discussions next year. That is an aim, not a decision, and it depends on the talks described below.

The size of the group depends on how you count. The 8 million figure is the minister's broad estimate of dependent contractors and platform workers combined, and unions cited a slightly larger count when they objected to the commission's vote. The government's own survey of platform work alone is far smaller. It found 883,000 platform workers as of 2023, including 485,000 in delivery and driving services.

What Do Platform Workers Earn, and What Problems Do They Report Today?

The most detailed official picture comes from the ministry's own 2023 platform worker survey, run with the Korea Employment Information Service and released in August 2024. Platform workers grew 11.1% on the year, while the delivery and driving segment shrank by 5.5%, a fall the ministry linked to lower delivery demand after the pandemic.

Work patterns in that survey are uneven. Platform workers averaged 14.4 days a month and 6.2 hours a day, and average monthly income from platform work slipped slightly from 2022, which the ministry partly put down to fewer hours and fewer people doing it as their main job. Those are averages across all platform jobs, from software work to delivery, so they say little about any single rider's hourly rate. That gap is exactly what the new survey of piece-rate workers is meant to fill.

Among the problems workers named in the same survey:

• Being asked to do work not in the contract, cited by 12.2% of respondents.
• Health and safety risks, at 11.9%.
• One-sided contract changes, at 10.5%.
• Late payment, at 9.5%.

What Are the Three Questions That Will Decide the Pay Floor?

The minister has named them himself. The three points of contention are coverage, the pay standard and the cost burden, meaning who gets the floor, how the floor is set and who pays for it. He also called tripartite talks among labor, management and the government essential to introducing the system.

Each question is still open. The policy study will set the scope of coverage and design how pay would be calculated, and the field survey will examine how costs are shared in each priority occupation.

Business groups argued in this year's commission talks that a uniform pay floor cannot be applied to piece-rate workers, and the discussion ended without agreement. Right after the commission's decision, its public interest members recommended that the government set up a task force and research on coverage for dependent contractors and platform workers. Some in Korea expect the research could be partly reflected from the 2028 minimum wage deliberation, which gives a sense of how long the process may take.

A pay floor is only as good as the hours it counts, and the survey plans to count waiting and travel time as work.

How Do the Courts and the New ILO Convention Change the Picture?

Two things outside the ministry are pushing in the same direction. In early July the Seoul High Court ruled that a delivery rider working through an online platform qualified as an employee under the Labor Standards Act, overturning a lower court. It was the first court decision to recognize a delivery rider's employee status. The court also called for separate legislation on platform labor, while backing a flexible reading of the current law in individual cases.

That ruling does not make every rider an employee. The case was one union member's lawsuit, and the court held that status depends on whether a person actually worked for wages in a subordinate relationship, not on the form of the contract. But it means a rider who works under a platform's direction has a live legal argument for full labor law protection, including the paid leave and severance pay that come with it.

The second push is international. The International Labour Organization adopted its first convention on decent work in the platform economy on 12 June. The adopted text asks member states to ensure that platform workers in an employment relationship receive pay no lower than the applicable statutory or negotiated minimum wage, and to consider whether that protection should extend to platform workers who are not employees. A convention binds only the countries that ratify it, and this one comes into force twelve months after two member states ratify. Unions say the Korean government voted in favour of the convention the day after the commission's vote, a point they used to press the ministry for piece-rate coverage.

What This Means for Gig Workers, and What Should You Do Next?

Our take is that this is a real shift in approach, but a slow one. Since 2024 the commission has debated whether the minimum wage should extend to platform workers, and the idea has never passed. The ministry is now looking at a separate floor that would not depend on employee status, because widening minimum wage coverage would mean amending the Labor Standards Act or the Minimum Wage Act. The ILO text also asks countries to consider extending pay protection to platform workers who are not employees. But the three hard questions, coverage, the standard and the cost, have not been answered, and this year's commission talks on piece-rate pay ended without agreement.

For riders and couriers in Korea, the practical lesson is that the new system, if it comes, will be built on measured working time and costs. The workers who can show their real hours and expenses will be the ones best placed to use it, or to back a claim under the existing law. Here is what we would do now:

• Log your waiting time. Note when you log on, how long you wait between orders and how far you ride back to pickup zones, since the survey will count waiting and travel time as work.
• Keep your cost receipts. The survey will count work-related costs such as fuel and communications, so keep receipts for those and for other job costs such as repairs.
• Save every pay statement. The study will use pay statements and work records, and so would any claim you make.
• Check your contract terms. According to the union that brought the case, the Seoul High Court found in July that platform riders cannot secure orders on their own and that their pay is effectively set by the company, so if that describes your work, your status may be worth testing with a union or labor attorney.
• Watch next year's commission round. The ministry plans to review how to introduce the system in next year's Minimum Wage Commission talks, so that is the first place a real floor could appear.

If you are weighing delivery work outside Korea, our breakdown of what pizza delivery drivers really make after mileage shows the same cost math in a US setting. And the Just Eat couriers' mass lawsuit is a useful comparison on how gig worker status fights play out in court elsewhere.

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People Also Asked

Q: Do delivery riders in South Korea get the minimum wage?

A: Only if they are recognized as employees. The Minimum Wage Act takes its definition of employee from the Labor Standards Act, and platform riders have generally been treated as independent contractors, although in July the Seoul High Court recognized one rider as an employee.

Q: What is the minimum wage in South Korea in 2026 and 2027?

A: It is 10,320 won an hour in 2026 and rises to 10,700 won an hour in 2027, with the new rate taking effect on January 1.

Q: When will South Korea's minimum pay system for gig workers start?

A: No start date has been set. The ministry's policy study runs through December, and the labor minister wants a floor applied at least to delivery riders in next year's minimum wage round, which still depends on talks between unions, employers and the government.

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