Hello, this is attorney Choi Jong-ha of Cheongchul Law Firm.

If an employee is punished for drunk driving, can the company dismiss them for it?

Conduct serious enough to attract criminal punishment is usually highly blameworthy, but whether it can also justify workplace discipline — when it has no direct connection to the job or the company — is an area where opinions diverge. In short: criminal punishment arising in an employee's private life belongs in principle to their private sphere, but the analysis changes the moment it becomes bound up with the performance of the job or with the company's credit and reputation.

Korean courts have upheld dismissal where the drunk driving was closely connected to the work and the offence itself was grave. In one case, an employee of a manufacturing company ignored a police officer's order to stop during a sobriety check, accelerated for some 40 metres and caused injury, resulting in a charge of obstruction of official duties causing bodily harm. Combined with the fact that he already had two prior drunk driving offences and this was his third, the court held that the conduct fell within the disciplinary and dismissal grounds in the company's rules of employment and that the dismissal was justified (Daejeon District Court, Cheonan Branch, Decision of 14 April 2017, 2016Gahap101832). The drunk driving mattered, but what proved decisive was the impact of such blameworthy conduct on the company's credit and workplace order.

Drunk driving does not, however, automatically justify dismissal. Where a local government refuse truck driver was caught driving with a blood alcohol concentration of 0.142%, had his licence revoked and was fined KRW 3 million, and was then dismissed, the court held that dismissal on the basis of that single incident was an abuse of discretion even for a driving role, and rejected the employer's claim (Seoul Administrative Court, Decision of 22 June 2017, 2016Guhap65558). The court weighed the facts that the drunk driving was not connected to the performance of his duties, that by the time of the disciplinary dismissal a special pardon had already restored his ability to drive despite the licence revocation, and that no further harm such as an accident had resulted.

Where the role has little connection to driving, the courts are stricter still. In a recent case, a team leader at a public foundation drove roughly 18 km with a blood alcohol concentration of 0.116%, and the employer removed him for “damage to honour and prestige and loss of dignity”. The court held the dismissal unfair (Seoul Administrative Court, Decision of 27 June 2025, 2024Guhap82800). Its reasoning was that where the employee's duties bore no direct relation to driving and there was no separate ground undermining the relationship of trust under the employment contract, dismissal for a single drunk driving incident was excessively harsh.