'Youth Dedicated Lawyer' Established... Free Legal Services for Unfair Employment Cases

Announcement of 17 'Life-Experience-Based' Youth Policy Improvement Tasks

[Sejong=Asia Economy Reporter Son Sunhee] The government will establish a 'Youth Dedicated Agent (such as lawyers)' to provide free legal services for young people who have been unilaterally canceled from employment or unfairly dismissed by companies.

On the 30th, the government held a 'Youth Policy Dedicated Department Vice-Ministerial Meeting' chaired by Koo Yoon-cheol, Minister for Government Policy Coordination, and announced 17 youth policy system improvement measures. Minister Koo explained, "This is the first youth policy outcome collaboratively prepared as one team since the establishment of youth policy dedicated departments in each ministry," adding, "We focused on practical system improvements that are small but directly related to young people's lives and can be felt as changes."

In addition, the 'Youth Tomorrow Savings Deduction' program, implemented to provide lump-sum savings opportunities for young people employed in small and medium-sized enterprises, has been exploited due to the difficulty of changing jobs easily until the deduction matures, resulting in unfair cases such as workplace harassment and wage cuts. Accordingly, the government plans to establish a dedicated counseling window for unfair treatment of deduction subscribers and build a reporting channel.

During the operation of the recruitment-linked internship system, if there are illegal cases such as non-hiring or unilateral hiring postponement after the internship ends, unpaid overtime allowance, or minimum wage non-payment, the government will actively correct them and support incentives for regular employment. It also announced measures to ensure that public institution experiential internships are operated more substantively, such as shortening the inspection cycle for performance reports.

Regarding youth housing issues, the government has strengthened protection measures for young tenants. As it is difficult to verify market prices and there is an increase in jeonse fraud in multi-family houses where many young tenants such as early-career workers and newlyweds live, the damage to the youth is significant. Accordingly, through the revision of the Enforcement Decree of the Licensed Real Estate Agents Act, the amount of liability for damages was doubled from the existing 100 million won to 200 million won.

Furthermore, to activate jeonse rental housing, which is highly preferred by young people, the government plans to provide listings through various online platforms and mutually share listings with private platforms such as Real Estate 114. For young workers in industrial complexes, the eligibility for Happy Housing will be relaxed to provide more housing opportunities. Additionally, if student loan delinquency occurs, the government will proactively check the repayment ability of young people and support deferral of repayment without complicated applications.

To support youth startups, a FRONT1 fund worth a total of 42 billion won will be established to focus investment on early-stage companies. In addition, the Youth Startup Academy will be reorganized to reflect the voices of young people.

Other initiatives include ▲strengthening support for university students' career planning ▲establishing a one-stop service for unified submission of employment documents ▲creating a startup-friendly environment through academic system reform.

The government stated, "To ensure that the announced tasks are carried out smoothly, we will frequently share progress through a dedicated organization council and coordinate matters requiring inter-ministerial cooperation," adding, "We will continue to discover improvement tasks through communication not only with youth stakeholders but also with private experts based on continuous collaboration among dedicated departments."