Korea Employment Agency for the Disabled and Coupang Collaborate to Create New Jobs for People with Disabilities

Analysis of Types Including Women, Severe Cases, and Middle-aged
7 New Job Roles Discovered
Over 200 New Hires Last Year

A worker employed as a 'E-commerce Shopping Partner' at Coupang. The Korea Employment Agency for the Disabled and Coupang newly identified seven job roles last year and hired over 200 new partners. (Photo by Korea Employment Agency for the Disabled)

[Sejong=Asia Economy Reporter Moon Chaeseok] The Korea Employment Agency for the Disabled under the Ministry of Employment and Labor recently announced that it created jobs for over 200 people with disabilities last year in collaboration with Coupang. They analyzed types of disabilities including women, severe, and middle-aged disabled individuals and newly developed seven job roles. This drew attention as a new model of job creation presented by public institutions and companies.

The seven newly created job roles include driving commuter vehicles for delivery workers, managing unmanned vending machines, and roles such as 'Delivery Photo Monitoring Staff' who verify and document whether the delivery location matches the customer's request, 'Delivery Worker Pilot' who operates shuttle buses for delivery workers' commuting, and 'Delivery Worker Mentor' who supports new delivery workers' adaptation to company life.

The agency and Coupang named these roles 'E-commerce Shopping Partners.' They determined suitable types of disabilities and working conditions for each role. In particular, the Delivery Photo Monitoring Staff position targets women and people with severe disabilities and allows for remote work.

Coupang's employment rate of people with disabilities, which was only 0.54% in 2019, rose to 1.84% last year. Although it is not considered a high level, it shows that a system for continuous employment of people with disabilities has been established.

An agency official said, "In a situation where economic uncertainty is increasing due to the prolonged COVID-19 pandemic and jobs for people with disabilities are threatened, we succeeded in creating a large number of jobs for people with disabilities by cooperating with the e-commerce company Coupang," and evaluated, "Coupang opened the way for large-scale employment of people with disabilities through the agency's systematic job development consulting." Coupang plans to continue new hires by organizing a dedicated team for employing people with disabilities and to develop new job roles for people with disabilities with the agency.

Cho Hyang-hyun, the agency's director, said, "We will expand job development consulting and develop more detailed support policies to continuously increase jobs for people with disabilities."