■ How do Termination and Recommended Resignation Differ?
Termination and voluntary resignation are distinguished as the means of terminating an employment relationship. Voluntary resignation refers to a situation where an employee voluntarily expresses their intention to resign without any room for legal dispute under labor law. On the other hand, termination requires a legitimate reason under Article 23(1) of the Labor Standards Act, as it involves the unilateral decision of the employer to sever the employment relationship.
Meanwhile, "recommended resignation" falls within the boundary between voluntary resignation and termination. It refers to a situation where an employee has an internal intention not to resign but is forced to submit a resignation letter due to the employer's recommendation, and the employer accepts it, thereby terminating the employment relationship. Since the submitted resignation letter appears to be the cause of the termination, there seems to be no dispute related to the termination. However, under Article 107 of the Civil Act (expression of intention not in good faith), "the effect of the expression of intention is valid even if the other party knew or could have known that the expressing party did not act in good faith." Therefore, there can be legal disputes if the employer's intention is not sincere.
Case law has shown that if an employer accepts selective resignations after receiving a mass resignation, it can be considered termination, whereas if the employer pays a severance package to specific employees in exchange for their resignation due to urgent business reasons, it can be seen as a mutual agreement to resign.
Since there is no concrete and clear legal standard for determining whether a recommended resignation is a mutual agreement to resign or termination, there have been many legal disputes in this regard. Therefore, this article will examine legal judgment criteria based on related cases.

■ Case of Dismissal
If an employee who did not have the intention to resign was forced by the employer to write and submit a resignation letter, this can be considered invalid because there was no genuine intention on the part of the employee. Even if the employer follows the formal process of receiving a resignation letter from the employee and accepting it to terminate the employment contract, if the employee was forced to write and submit the letter against their will, it is essentially a unilateral decision by the employer to end the employment relationship, and it can be considered a dismissal. Unjustified dismissal measures are considered equivalent to unfair dismissal.

❍ Submission of Resignation Letter by Foreign Workers due to Employer's Demand
If a foreign worker is compelled by the employer to submit a resignation letter stating that they cannot be sent back home for medical treatment related to a work-related injury without submitting a resignation letter beforehand, and the worker submits the letter against their will, the resignation based on the submission of such a letter is invalid.

❍ Mass Submission of Resignation Letters and Retirement Processing of All Employees
If a team in charge of quality management receives strong criticism from the executive for quality problems and the team members, as a result, write and submit resignation letters to the executive through a team meeting, it may not be considered a genuine expression of intent to resign. Instead, it can be regarded as a gesture of taking responsibility for the team's past mistakes anda commitment to work better in the future. If the employer dismisses all members of the quality management team under such circumstances, where the team members are just lower-level employees and the whole team's work is affected, and they were forced to submit resignation letters due to the situation created by the higher-ups, it can be considered a practical dismissal.

❍ Submission of Resignation Letter in Bulk and Selective Retirement Processing
In the case where the company is instructed by the supervisory agency to select and dismiss a certain number of employees and all employees are required to submit resignation letters in bulk, if the company selectively processes only six of the submitted resignation letters for termination, it would be considered a dismissal based on the company's unilateral decision to terminate the employment relationship, even for employees who did not have the intention to resign.

❍ Bulk Submission of Resignation Letters by Upper-Level Executives and Collective Resignation Processing
If the CEO of the company instructs the upper-level executives to submit resignation letters in bulk to the chairman while requesting reappointment, and all executives submit resignation letters without intending to resign, and the company processes all the submitted resignation letters for retirement, it would be considered a dismissal based on the CEO's unilateral decision to terminate the employment contract relationship.

❍ Submission of Resignation Letter According to Group Policy and Transfer to a Subsidiary
In the case where an employee is transferred from the parent company to a subsidiary and then back to the parent company, if the employee voluntarily submits a resignation letter to the parent or subsidiary company and receives severance pay before rejoining the subsidiary or parent company, the employment relationship with the former company will be severed. However, if the resignation and re-employment were simply formalities based on the parent company's management policy and there was no intention by the employee to sever the employment relationship, even if the employee received severance pay, the employment relationship would not be considered severed.

❍ Unilateral Recommendation of Resignation for Undervalued Employees
If a rural development corporation, as part of its workforce reduction plan under the government's public enterprise management innovation plan, arbitrarily designates certain employees as problematic employees without reasonable and fair criteria and recommends resignation as a means of terminating the employment contract, it would be considered a dismissal in practice.

■ Recommendations for Dealing with Disadvantages of Resignation and How to Handle Them
When an employer unilaterally demands that an employee terminate their employment, which is called dismissal, they must give notice of dismissal in principle 30 days in advance. If notice is not given, the employer must pay the employee 30 days' worth of average wages as compensation for the lack of notice. On the other hand, voluntary resignation by submitting a resignation letter and terminating the employment relationship through consultation with the employer is not considered wrongful dismissal, so the employee cannot receive compensation for lack of notice. Furthermore, if the employee resigns due to their own fault, they cannot receive unemployment benefits.
As for how to deal with recommendations for resignation, it is recommended to clearly indicate one's refusal to resign, avoid writing a resignation letter, not demand or receive compensation such as money or gifts, and collect evidence if subjected to unfair treatment such as verbal abuse or physical violence.