Top court recognizes maximum working age for physical labor to be 65

The Supreme Court ruling on Thursday. Yonhap

By Lee Suh-yoon

The Supreme Court recognized the maximum working age for physical labor as 65, Thursday, overturning a 1989 decision that set the figure at 60.

The decision, which came in a suit calculating the lost income of a child in a death compensation claim, is likely to affect many other social factors such as insurance and retirement age.

“With the development over the years of our socioeconomic structure, living conditions and legal institutions, the underlying conditions that supported the 1989 decision have changed,” Chief Justice Kim Myeong-su said, citing increased average lifespan and the rise in economic income.

“It is now difficult to maintain the view that the maximum working age for a physical laborer is 60 years old.”

The case was brought to court by family members of a four-year-old child, surnamed Park, who drowned in a swimming pool in Incheon in 2015. The parents filed a compensation suit against the swimming pool operator and the city government.

The lower courts calculated Park would have made 283 million won ($252,000) based on the premise he would have worked until he was 60 years old, and ordered the swimming pool operator to provide 174 million won in compensation, holding it for 60 percent of the responsibility.

With this decision, the top court sent the case back to the lower court so the compensation sum could be recalculated.

“Though it came late, it is a commendable decision on the court's part,” Roh Hee-bum, the lawyer who represented Park's parents in the case, told reporters after the ruling. “With the higher average lifespan, the demand for work by the elderly is rising as we have reached an era where people over 60 must also work to ensure sufficient income.”

Whether it is correct to consider a minor in a death settlement to be a potential physical laborer ― rather than a higher-wage white-collar worker ― when calculating lost income, however, was still questionable, he added.