디지털 시대, 노동법의 경계석 고쳐 세우기

There have been significant changes in the employment types that were heretofore nearly exclusively based on the contract of employment. The trend is even more accelerating in the digital era that we are living in. Individual employment law statues in the narrow sense have been relatively slow to respond. The 2006 Supreme Court ruling on the concept of employee under the Labour Standards Act lowered the overall threshold for recognition as an employee. Nevertheless, it seems that the Court has maintained its conventional stance and criteria based on an employee’s personal subordination to the employer to decide the employment status under the Labour Standards Act of a case. This article regards labour law (in a broad sense including related social security laws) as the totality of individual legal norms aimed at resolving or mitigating vulnerabilities found in labour relations, namely legal subordination and economic dependence. Here, business integration does not imply vulnerability by and in itself, but can be used as a useful instrumental concept in that it can presume legal subordination and/or economic dependence. Thus, individual employment law statutes (and individual rules, standards, and principles therein) within the realm of labour law are there to protect each group of people who share each specific vulnerability. Resolving or mitigating vulnerabilities, or protecting such groups of people is also the goal of employment and labour law. From this perspective, this article further argues, each provision in such a statute, unless stated otherwise, may apply to a specific category of workers who share a specific vulnerability in labour relations.