Would anyone walk into a theater without knowing the price of the ticket? Unfortunately, that is the position of job seekers in today's hiring market. Applicants are required to disclose their academic background, career history, and personal statements on their resumes, while companies hide salary — the core of working conditions — behind vague phrases such as "to be determined through negotiation" or "in accordance with internal regulations." This thoroughly tilted playing field is the current state of Korea's hiring market. A glance at recruitment platforms confirms that fewer than 10 percent of companies disclose salaries.
The damage from this information asymmetry falls entirely on job seekers. Without wage information, most applicants submit their documents knowing only that the position matches their field, relying on the company's reputation and online reviews from current and former employees. Only after passing various tests, exams, and interviews and receiving a final offer can they confirm their salary when signing the employment contract. It is common for applicants to give up on joining the company after seeing a low salary, or to resign shortly after starting. No one compensates job seekers for the time and money they invest from preparing documents to attending interviews. This is more than a personal loss — it is a waste of opportunity costs for society as a whole. Some may argue that applicants can simply ask HR managers about salary during interviews or document submission, but in most cases, HR managers will also avoid giving a direct answer, citing the "to be determined through negotiation" language in the job posting. On top of that, Korean culture treats it as taboo for applicants to bring up pay before joining a company.
Unfortunately, current law cannot correct this reality. The existing Fair Hiring Procedure Act prohibits false job advertisements and bans the demand for personal information, but it lacks the very obligation job seekers need most: prior disclosure of wages. While it is punishable to disguise hiring as a means to promote a business or extract ideas, there is no legal basis to sanction the act of confusing job seekers by withholding wage information. Provisions that prevent unfavorable changes to working conditions after hiring cannot resolve the information imbalance that misaligns the very first step of the hiring process.
As an institutional alternative, I propose adding a provision to Article 4 of the Fair Hiring Procedure Act that mandates the disclosure of specific wage ranges. Employers would be required to specify the upper and lower limits of the salary payable for a given position when posting a job advertisement.
Whenever salary disclosure comes up, one argument always follows: that disclosing wages will increase the burden of labor costs on companies and constrain management. But corporate salary disclosure has already been validated in the public sector. Under the integrated disclosure standards of Articles 11 and 12 of the Act on the Management of Public Institutions, Korea's major public institutions disclose to the public — through the Job Alio system — not only the starting salaries of new hires and average salaries but also the detailed execution of personnel cost budgets. For private companies, this would simply mean publishing externally the internal salary guidelines they have already set, making it far from a burdensome regulation.
If the law is amended, job seekers will no longer have to waste unnecessary energy on positions that do not match their conditions. Some recruitment platforms estimate expected salaries based on companies' national pension contributions, but these figures are not accurate. Job seekers will no longer have to build vague financial plans based on inaccurate estimates. We must guarantee job seekers' rightful access to information and reduce the waste it imposes on society as a whole. Ending the practice of opaque, blind job postings — and ensuring transparent disclosure of information — is the most basic form of justice our society can offer to those looking for work.
