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

Can you dismiss an employee who, as it later turns out, put false information on the very first document of the hiring process, the resume? The short answer is that false statements on a resume can certainly be grounds for dismissal, but not every false statement leads directly to dismissal.

On whether misrepresenting one's education or career history constitutes grounds for dismissal, the Supreme Court held: “Whether the employment relationship can no longer be continued by social norms must be determined by comprehensively considering not only the circumstances at the time of hiring, such as whether the employer would not have concluded the employment contract, or at least not on the same terms, had it known of the false statement in advance, but also the nature and duration of the work the employee performed from hiring until dismissal, whether the falsely stated education or the like interferes with the normal performance of that work, how the employer came to learn of the false statement, the employee's attitude and the employer's measures after learning of it, the impact that the revelation of a discrepancy in education or the like has on maintaining trust between labor and management and among employees and on stable business management and order, and other various circumstances” (Supreme Court Decision 2009Du16763, July 5, 2012[1]). In other words, the mere fact of a false statement does not automatically allow termination of the employment contract; the key test is the extent to which the falsehood undermined the trust on which the employment contract was formed. In that case, an employee who had graduated from a four-year university concealed that fact and applied for a production job, and the court also took into account that the company had a policy of not hiring university graduates for production positions.

Conversely, there are cases in which a false statement existed but did not rise to the level justifying dismissal. Where an employee hired as a bus driver omitted from his resume a single prior stint of four months at another company, the Supreme Court affirmed the lower court's conclusion that the omission could not be a legitimate ground for dismissal, because no specific circumstances were established showing that the company would have treated that work history as a material consideration in deciding whether to conclude the employment contract (Supreme Court Decision 99Da53865, December 21, 1999). The decisive point was that one short period of prior employment was not important enough to determine the hiring decision.

That said, resume fraud itself is by no means treated lightly. In a case contesting the dismissal of an employee who had inflated roughly one year and four months of actual work experience into about four years on his resume, the Supreme Court held: “Entering false career history on a resume that is required to be submitted for such purposes is in itself a significant negative factor regarding the employee's honesty, and moreover distorts the company's overall assessment of the character of the workers it intends to hire. Therefore, rules of employment that designate the entry of false career history or the like on a resume submitted at the time of hiring as a ground for disciplinary dismissal are valid as a provision of legitimate grounds for dismissal, unless there are special circumstances such as the false entry having resulted from the author's mistake, or the content being so trivial that treating it as a ground for disciplinary dismissal would be unreasonable by social norms.” Considering the length of the falsely stated career and its proportion of the employee's overall career, the court found the dismissal to be one with just cause (Supreme Court Decision 90DaKa23912, December 7, 1990).

Even for the same kind of resume misstatement, the scales weigh whether it was material enough to substantially affect the hiring decision, whether it interferes with the performance of the employee's duties, how the company came to learn of it, and how the employee behaved afterward. A resume is the first document of trust on which an employment contract begins. If a company establishes a procedure for collecting diplomas and employment certificates from the hiring stage, it will be better positioned to prove its verification efforts in any later dispute; and if the falsehood discovered is a trivial one unrelated to the employee's duties, it is advisable to obtain a legal review first rather than proceeding straight to dismissal. From the employee's side, be careful when describing any history related to your duties, and if you realize that a resume you have already submitted contains inaccuracies, it is best to correct them before the problem grows. The weight of the exaggeration contained in that document ultimately becomes the standard that determines whether the entire relationship of trust survives.

[1] After remand, the Seoul High Court (2012Nu23008) ruled partly in favor of the plaintiff, and the Supreme Court (2013Du18995) dismissed the further appeal, making the judgment final.