Labor foundation, Naver bring reemployment support to smaller IT firms

South Korea's labor ministry said Wednesday that the Labor-Management Development Foundation is holding IT-specific reemployment training for about 40 workers aged 40 and older at Naver's headquarters, the first concrete result of an August agreement between the foundation and the internet company.

The two-day program, which began Wednesday and runs through Thursday, brings together roughly 30 development staff from Naver and about 10 sales employees from Onpum, a smaller company that makes disaster alert and warning systems. The course covers 16 hours in total.

Sessions range from life-planning and career-asset assessment to searches for reemployment and startup cases in the IT sector, financial planning, government support programs, job-hunting skills and training in artificial intelligence tools for the workplace. The curriculum was built around the characteristics of the IT industry and the job experience of participants.

The program follows a memorandum of understanding signed on Aug. 19 by the foundation and Naver to spread reemployment support services across the IT industry and help older workers stay in the workforce. Naver and Onpum joined a joint consulting arrangement under which the larger company shares its operating experience with smaller partners.

Under the Aged Employment Act, companies with 1,000 or more employees must provide departing workers with career diagnosis, career planning, job placement and reemployment training. Smaller firms are not covered by the obligation, and budget and staffing constraints have made it difficult for them to introduce such services on their own.

To close that gap, the foundation began a joint consulting program this year that pairs the operating know-how of large companies with its own expert advice. Naver built an IT-specific reemployment model through foundation consulting from 2024 to 2025 and received the employment and labor minister's award in 2025. Onpum said a lack of budget, dedicated staff and awareness of the system had kept it from offering such support, and that it joined the arrangement to set up a system its employees can use after retirement.

"This joint consulting is a practical case of ESG win-win cooperation in which the agreement with Naver has led to actual support for smaller companies," Park Jong-pil, secretary-general of the foundation, said in a statement. "We will continue to link the strong operating experience of large companies with the foundation's expert consulting to strengthen smaller firms' own capacity and keep expanding IT-specific reemployment support."

The foundation said it plans to expand the joint consulting model to more companies.