Daegu and North Gyeongsang Province have recorded the nation's highest rate of minimum wage law violation complaints for six consecutive years. Yet many young workers in the region who experience violations take no action, either doubting that complaints will achieve anything or fearing dismissal and other reprisals. The result is an unbroken cycle in which a stagnant local labor market feeds low pay and legal violations.
Complaints of minimum wage law violations filed with the Daegu Regional Employment and Labor Office, which covers Daegu and North Gyeongsang Province, reached 6.5 per 100,000 wage earners as of August this year, the highest among all regions, according to data submitted by the Ministry of Employment and Labor to the office of Rep. Yoon Jae-ok of the People Power Party, a member of the National Assembly's Climate, Energy, Environment and Labor Committee, on the 21st. The region has ranked first for six straight years since recording 20.5 cases in 2021.
The number of young workers suffering unpaid wages without filing any complaint is likely far higher. A survey of 391 young people in the region, conducted by the Daegu-North Gyeongsang Student and Youth Labor Rights Project — made up of the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions' Daegu-North Gyeongsang chapter and local student groups — found that 52% had experienced at least one instance of unfair treatment or a labor law violation. Of those, 65% said they took no action at all. Only 6% filed a complaint with the labor office or sought advice from a specialist.
Young workers showed a strong tendency to endure the harm in silence. Asked why they took no action, with multiple answers allowed, 58% said they did not expect it to make any difference. Another 51% said they worried about dismissal or other disadvantages.
Behind that endurance lies the sustained weakness of Daegu's labor market. The city's gross regional domestic product per capita has ranked last in the country for 30 consecutive years since 1995. Daegu's employment rate for those aged 15 to 64 stood at 66.5%, the lowest among the country's 17 major cities and provinces, according to the Daegu labor office's August labor market report for Daegu and North Gyeongsang Province. The city also led the nation in net outflow of people in their 20s for four straight years from 2021 to 2024.
Job quality is deteriorating as well. The number of permanent employees in Daegu fell by 6,000 in August from a year earlier, while the number of self-employed business owners without employees rose by 14,000. As tiny workplaces with weak capacity to pay multiply, disputes and losses over wages are intensifying. The survey also found that 70% of minimum wage violations involving young workers were concentrated in convenience stores and supermarkets. At one cluster of 32 convenience stores near a university campus, 13 were not paying the legal minimum hourly wage. Young workers most likely tolerated the underpayment to keep their jobs, even knowing it was illegal.
"Young people in Daegu already struggle to find good jobs, and even in the first job they manage to land, they are not being paid the minimum wage properly," Yoon said. "If we cannot even guarantee the legally mandated floor on wages, young people will have no reason to stay in the region."
