The Ministry of Employment and Labor and the Human Resources Development Service of Korea will extend employer-sponsored vocational skills development training to weekends, giving workers at small and medium-sized enterprises who cannot attend weekday sessions a new option. The move aims to boost participation among companies that have deferred job training due to concerns about production disruptions and the difficulty of securing replacement staff, while helping workers build their professional skills.
Under the program, priority-support eligible companies that run outsourced group training sessions of at least four hours on a Saturday or Sunday and pay training allowances to participating workers will receive government support of up to 50,000 won ($34) per worker per day, within the actual amount paid. For workers aged 34 or under, the daily support ceiling rises to 75,000 won. Both Korean nationals and foreign workers are eligible.
The system was designed to help small businesses raise workers' job competencies while keeping operational disruptions to a minimum. Weekend training is expected to serve as a practical alternative particularly for small workplaces, where employees often handle multiple roles — including production, quality control and equipment management — simultaneously, making weekday group sessions difficult to attend.
Eligible training must be outsourced group sessions for incumbent workers at priority-support eligible companies and must run exclusively on Saturdays and Sundays; courses that include weekdays or public holidays are excluded. Sessions must run for at least four hours per day. Certain programs — including the SME Talent Development premium training track — are also excluded from the support.
The preferential support applies to weekend training sessions that began July 1. Companies can check available training courses through the Employment24 portal and apply through a training institution. When submitting a claim for training costs, companies must include documentation proving that allowances were paid to workers.
"We hope weekend training will benefit workers at small and medium-sized enterprises who have had difficulty participating due to weekday work gaps or shift schedules," said Lee Byeong-hun, president of the Human Resources Development Service of Korea. "We will continue to support the development of job competencies among SME workers during this period of industrial transition."
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