Local conglomerates, manufacturers, a hospital and a bank are adopting the so-called “flexible part-time job system,” as part of measures to realize President Park Geun-hye’s goal of 70 percent job employment by 2017.

Up to 269 firms will hire 2,118 part-time workers within the next nine months with subsidies from the Labor Korea Foundation for the labor cost, the foundation’s officials said.

The system is aimed at removing employment practices that could become barriers to the employment rate increase, they explained.

This marks the first time that sizable firms like CJ Group, the Investment Bank of Korea and Hyosung ITX are taking part in the program since it was launched in 2010.

Seven of CJ Group’s affiliates, including CJ ChaeilJedang, CJ Foodville, CJ Olive Young and CJ E&M, will hire 285 people in total. CJ affiliates’ main targets are stay-at-home moms who are planning to reenter the workforce, according to officials.

Industrial Bank of Korea and Hyosung ITX will hire 100 and 300 people, respectively.

Different positions are available in various divisions, such as HR, marketing, pharmacist, management, digital design and content development.

“The flexible hiring system is to provide workers with work-home balance; expand firms’ flexibility in manpower; and increase the overall employment rate, especially women’s,” Moon Hyung-nam, general secretary of the KLF said.

The program targets part-time workers whose weekly work local is between 15 and 30 hours. It not only offers them insurance coverage for four major diseases but also labor contracts without fixed terms and welfare benefits equivalent to full-time workers’.

The labor foundation will assist the firms with 50 percent of labor costs, up to 600,000 won ($536) a month, officials explained.

“Response from conglomerates wasn’t that big before the Park administration revealed the job creation roadmap to 70 percent employment rate,” KLF consultant Kang Hye-jung told The Korea Herald.

The foundation already had four rounds of the program this year, but only 398 jobs were created in each session on average.

The Park administration has been pushing ahead with policies to raise the country’s employment rate from the current 64.2 percent, such as creating 930,000 part-time jobs and tax incentives and subsidies for firms that open more positions than usual.

The government expects to increase the employment rate for women from the current 53.5 percent to 61.9 percent and from 40.4 percent to 47.7 percent for youth.

By Suk Gee-hyun (monicasuk@heraldcorp.com)