1. According to Article 24(2) and (4) of the Trade Union and Labor Relations Adjustment Act (hereinafter “Labor Union Act”), a worker who exclusively works for a trade union affairs (hereinafter “labor union full-time officer”) shall not receive any benefits from the employer during his/her full-time period, but a worker designated as the object of exemption from working hours (hereinafter “person exempt from working hours”) may, without any wage loss, engage in the maintenance and management of a trade union for a certain business, such as negotiation with the employer, grievance settlement, industrial safety activities, etc., and for the development of sound labor-management relations, to the extent that he/she does not exceed the limit of exemption from working hours publicly notified.

In order to prevent a trade union from economically dependent on an employer and to secure the independence of a trade union, the legislative purpose of the above provision is to continuously guarantee the trade union's activities within a certain period of time by taking into account the net function of the full-time officer system for the employer's labor management affairs (see, e.g., Constitutional Court Order 2010HunMa606, May 29, 2014). Furthermore, Article 81 of the Labor Union Act which regulates the employer's unfair labor activities prohibits "the act of controlling or participating in the organization or operation of a trade union and the act of subsidizing wages to the full-time officer of the trade union or assisting the operation of the trade union" in the main sentence of subparagraph 4, and it does not constitute an unfair labor act. However, in the proviso, the phrase "the act of allowing a person exempted from the working hours to engage in such activities as above during the working hours" does not constitute an unfair labor act.

Therefore, the act of supporting wages to a worker who is not designated as a person exempt from working hours is merely merely a full-time officer.