Top 10 levy payers escape even pre-notification as hiring rates clear 1.55% threshold
99% of named firms had obligation for 100 or fewer disabled workers; critics call for reform
Only one of the 20 companies that paid the most in disability employment levies last year appeared on the government's list of firms that failed to meet their disability hiring obligations, data showed Friday. Ten of the 20 were not even subject to advance notification, as their disability employment rates exceeded the 1.55 percent disclosure threshold.
Critics say the system's reliance on employment rates alone creates a blind spot that allows large companies to avoid public disclosure even when they are hundreds of workers short of their legal hiring targets.
According to data submitted to Democratic Party of Korea lawmaker Lee Hak-young by the Korea Employment Agency for Persons with Disabilities, Asiana Airlines was the only company among the top 20 disability levy payers in 2024 to appear on the non-compliance disclosure list published last December.
The non-compliance disclosure regime names companies and public institutions whose disability employment records fall significantly short of legal requirements. It was introduced in 2008 to hold employers socially accountable for the practice of paying levies in lieu of actually hiring workers with disabilities.
Private-sector companies with 300 or more full-time employees are subject to disclosure if their disability employment rate falls below 1.55 percent — half the mandatory private-sector rate of 3.1 percent. Public-sector institutions face disclosure whenever they fall short of their 3.8 percent mandatory rate, a stricter standard.
Ten of the top 20 levy-paying companies had employment rates above 1.55 percent and were therefore excluded even from the advance-notification stage. Under current rules, a company can avoid disclosure entirely as long as its rate clears that threshold, even if it is hundreds of workers short of its legal obligation in absolute terms.
By contrast, 282 of the 284 private-sector companies named on last year's list — all except Asiana Airlines and Costco Korea — had a mandatory hiring obligation of 100 or fewer workers with disabilities, accounting for 99.3 percent of the total.
The 284 named companies collectively fell short of their disability hiring targets by 4,343 workers. The shortfall at the 10 top levy-paying companies that escaped advance notification amounted to roughly 84 percent of that total. The hiring gap at those 10 large companies nearly matched the combined shortfall of every firm on the public list, yet none of them entered the disclosure process because their employment rates cleared the threshold.
The agency's own research arm had earlier flagged the need to factor in company size and hiring improvement efforts. A 2023 research report by the Employment Development Institute found that disclosure rates fell as company size grew, and recommended raising the threshold rate if large companies were consistently clearing 1.55 percent by the narrowest of margins. The report also proposed exempting from disclosure companies that had consistently increased their disability employment rates in recent years, as a way to recognize genuine hiring efforts.
The revised operating rules that took effect in January, however, left the private-sector disclosure threshold unchanged at 50 percent of the mandatory employment rate. New provisions were added to separately identify companies that have appeared on the list for three consecutive years or that employ no workers with disabilities at all, but the rules still contain no provision to credit companies that have consistently expanded their disability hiring.
"The disclosure regime is meant to hold companies publicly accountable for their social responsibility toward disabled workers, yet the largest companies — those with the greatest responsibility — are the ones being left off the list, while smaller firms with fewer resources are the ones being named," Lee said. "The disclosure criteria should be differentiated by the scale of a company's mandatory hiring obligation, and the rules should be revised to recognize the efforts of companies that have consistently grown their disability workforce."
fact0514@heraldcorp.com
