Institute for Migrant Rights
Railway line at Cianjur station, c. 1890 · KITLV, CC BY 4.0

Migration Jurisprudence from the South › South Korea

Seoul-Gyeonggi-Incheon Migrants’ Trade Union v. Minister of Labor

Supreme Court of Korea · South Korea · 2015-06-25 · National court

Citation: 2007Du4995
Type of case: Administrative
Outcome: Decided for the migrant side

Question

Can migrant workers without a valid stay permit form and join a trade union?

What the court decided

Yes. Anyone who lives on wages from work is a worker under the Trade Union Act, whatever their immigration status; refusing the union’s registration on that ground was unlawful.

In plain language

Migrant workers in Korea set up a union, but the government refused to register it because some members had no valid visa. After eight years in court, the Supreme Court said all people who work for wages are workers and may form unions.

Dalam bahasa sederhana

Pekerja migran di Korea membentuk serikat, tetapi pemerintah menolak mendaftarkannya karena sebagian anggota tidak punya visa yang sah. Setelah delapan tahun di pengadilan, Mahkamah Agung menyatakan semua orang yang bekerja untuk upah adalah pekerja dan boleh membentuk serikat.

Pertanyaan: Bisakah pekerja migran tanpa izin tinggal yang sah membentuk dan bergabung dengan serikat pekerja?

What happened afterwards

  • 2005: Union founded; registration refused.
  • 2007-02-01: Seoul High Court rules for the union.
  • 2015-06-25: Supreme Court rules for the union.
  • 2015-08: After two further refusals and a sit-in, the ministry registers the union.

Sources

Open this decision in the interactive collection (compare, filter, Indonesian view, downloads).

Cite as: Institute for Migrant Rights (2026), Migration Jurisprudence from the South, version 0.1, https://theimr.org/court-decisions/d/kr-mtu-2015/. This page summarizes a court decision for research and advocacy; it is not legal advice.

For researchers

This collection of decisions is built for empirical legal scholarship and socio-legal research on migration and the rights of migrant workers, as well as for advocacy.

The coded variables support statistical analysis in law: cross-national comparison, regression and event-history designs, and law and economics questions such as how recruitment fees, wage protection and limits on changing employer affect migrant workers. The data can be downloaded for replication.

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