1.

Background

The case involved a fixed-term worker (the “Employee”) of a waste collection and transportation company (the “Company”). The Employee’s contract had been extended once, with an expiration date of December 31, 2022. On December 16, 2022, the Company notified the Employee that the contract would expire as scheduled.

Subsequently, on January 14, 2023, while processing documents to receive severance pay, the Employee signed and submitted a resignation letter stating, “I confirm that I have no objection to the processing of my resignation from the Company due to the expiration of the contract term effective December 31, 2022.”

Five days later, on January 19, 2023, the Employee filed a claim for unfair dismissal with the Chungnam Regional Labor Relations Commission. The Employee argued that he held a “reasonable expectation of renewal” regarding his fixed-term contract and that the Company’s refusal to renew the contract constituted unfair dismissal.
 

2.

The Supreme Court’s Decision

On October 16, 2025, the Supreme Court overturned the lower court’s decision—which had ruled in favor of the Employee—and remanded the case.

The Supreme Court held that, if an employment relationship is terminated by the employee submitting a resignation letter expressing an intent to resign before filing a claim for unfair dismissal, the employee generally lacks the legal standing to seek a remedial order from the Labor Relations Commission (“Commission”) and subsequent administrative lawsuit seeking cancellation of the Commission’s decision, unless special circumstances exist. Consequently, the Supreme Court ruled that the lower court should have first deliberated on the circumstances surrounding the drafting and submission of the resignation letter and its validity to determine whether the employment relationship had already validly terminated at the time of the filing. Because the lower court did not examine whether the resignation extinguished the Employee’s legal standing before ruling on the dismissal itself, the Supreme Court overturned the decision.
 

3.

Implications and Takeaways

This ruling reaffirms and clarifies the Supreme Court’s stance on procedural standing in labor disputes. Back in 2022, the Supreme Court established that, if an employment relationship has already ended—for reasons such as retirement, contract expiration, or business closure—by the time a remedy is sought, the legal standing in seeking a remedial order has extinguished.

This is distinct from the Supreme Court’s 2020 en banc decision, which also interpreted the scope of legal standing. In that 2020 case, the Court affirmed that the legal standing to continue a lawsuit to seek back pay survives even if the employment contract expires or the employee reaches the company’s retirement age during the litigation (i.e., while the validity of the dismissal was being contested).

However, the recent October 2025 Supreme Court ruling clarifies that the logic of the 2020 en banc decision does not apply to cases where the employment relationship had already terminated before the initial application for relief was filed.
 
This decision is legally significant for two primary reasons:
 

(1)

Timing of Termination: It confirms that if an employment relationship is terminated via resignation before a claim is filed with the Commission, the employee loses the legal standing to seek a remedial order because he/she had already lost his/her status as an employee.
 

(2)

Impact on Administrative Litigation: It clarifies that once the “standing to seek a remedial order” from the Commission is extinguished, the “standing to sue” in court to cancel the Commission’s decision is also extinguished (unless special circumstances exist) as the Commission can no longer issue a remedy even if the decision were overturned.