Jeong Woo-taek Proposes Amendment to Minimum Wage Act for Regional Differentiation

"Population Decline Areas Should Receive More Support"

On the 6th, Jeong Woo-taek, a member of the People Power Party on the National Assembly's Public Administration and Security Committee, introduced a bill to amend the Minimum Wage Act to allow differentiated application of minimum wages by region. The core of the bill is to enable local government heads to request differentiated minimum wage application for their jurisdictions.

Additionally, for workers receiving differentiated minimum wages, the local government heads can compensate the wage levels, and the costs can be primarily supported through the government's Special Account for National Balanced Development and the Local Extinction Response Fund (limited to population decline areas). Currently, the minimum wage is determined by the Minister of Employment and Labor through the resolution of the Minimum Wage Commission and can be set separately by type of business.

Jung Woo-taek, Vice Speaker of the National Assembly. / Photo by Yoon Dong-joo doso7@

Rep. Jeong pointed out, "If the minimum wage is uniformly increased again, the labor cost burden on small self-employed business owners will increase, raising concerns about further employment reduction, and recently, the proportion of one-person self-employed businesses has been on the rise." He especially explained the purpose of the bill, saying, "In areas at risk of population extinction, the minimum wage for local workers can be set higher than that of the metropolitan area to create population incentives, and the government can support this."

According to Statistics Korea, as of 2022, out of 5.63 million self-employed individuals, about 4.26 million were counted as 'one-person business owners.' Rep. Jeong reiterated, "There is a need to discuss differentiated application of minimum wages by region to alleviate regional population outflow and the imbalance between job demand and supply."