Offer Letter vs. Employment Agreement in Korea

A Korean candidate receives an offer letter specifying the job title, salary, start date, and reporting line, and accepts the offer by email.

Before the employee starts work, however, global headquarters announces a hiring freeze. The Korean entity then withdraws the offer on the ground that no formal employment agreement has yet been signed.

This type of situation occurs relatively frequently in multinational companies operating in Korea.

Global headquarters may commonly assume that:

• •“No formal Employment Agreement has been signed, so no employment contract exists.”
• •“An offer letter is merely a document used during negotiations.”
• •“Even without an express conditions-precedent clause, final approval from headquarters is implicitly required.”

Under Korean law, however, the first question is not simply what the document is called, but how the hiring process actually operated.

The title “Offer Letter” is less important than whether the essential employment terms were sufficiently definite and whether the candidate clearly accepted those terms.

In practice, several legal issues are closely connected, particularly whether a binding employment contract or a legally protected hiring commitment has already been established.

For multinational companies hiring employees in Korea, an Offer Letter should therefore not be treated as a simple administrative document. Its wording, approval conditions, and acceptance process should be carefully structured from the outset.