Open Decision Ledger · Rehabilitation & bankruptcy
Priority of the wage-protection fund's subrogated claim in a bankruptcy auction
Supreme Court, Sept. 29, 2022, 2021Da269364 (judgment)
No holding summary · checked against points at issue. The official text publishes no summary of the holding for this decision. The quotation and factors in this record are copied verbatim from the points at issue; the evidence for each axis is taken from the points at issue, the order and the reasons.
Case name: 배당이의
Official text on the National Law Information Center
Question
Where the Korea Workers' Compensation and Welfare Service has paid unpaid wages in place of the bankrupt employer and subrogated to the workers' rights under Article 8(2) of the Wages Claim Security Act, does its claim rank ahead of other secured creditors in the auction following an exercise of the right of separate satisfaction, and may it receive the distribution directly?
Holding
Yes to priority, no to direct receipt. The proviso to Article 415-2 of the Debtor Rehabilitation and Bankruptcy Act means only that a claim subrogated under Article 8 of the Wages Claim Security Act does not let the Fund take the distribution in its own hand as a worker may; it does not deny the right to rank ahead of other secured creditors. The distribution is therefore made to the bankruptcy trustee, and the Fund is repaid through the trustee.
Points at issue, verbatim
근로복지공단이 파산채무자인 사업주를 대신하여 미지급 임금을 지급하고 임금채권보장법 제8조 제2항에 따라 근로자의 권리를 대위하는 경우, 별제권 행사에 따른 경매절차에서 다른 담보물권자보다 우선하여 변제받을 수 있는지 여부(적극) 및 이때 근로복지공단이 배당금을 직접 받을 수 있는지 여부(소극)
Unofficial English translation
Where the Korea Workers' Compensation & Welfare Service pays unpaid wages on behalf of the business owner who is a bankrupt debtor and subrogates to the rights of the employee pursuant to Article 8 (2) of the Wage Claim Guarantee Act, whether it may receive payment in preference to other security interest holders in the auction proceedings following the exercise of the right of separate satisfaction (affirmative), and whether the Korea Workers' Compensation & Welfare Service may directly receive the distribution proceeds on that occasion (negative)
Disposition
Reversed and remanded Stated in the decision
원심판결을 파기하고, 사건을 서울고등법원에 환송한다.
Unofficial English translation
The judgment of the court below is reversed, and the case is remanded to the Seoul High Court.
Form of the test
Elements stated Stated in the decision
이는 파산채무자인 사업주를 대신하여 미지급 임금을 지급하고 임금채권보장법 제8조 제2항에 따라 근로자의 권리를 대위하는 근로복지공단은 별제권 행사에 따른 경매절차에서 근로자와는 달리 배당금을 직접 받을 수 없다는 뜻일 뿐, 근로복지공단이 다른 담보물권자보다 우선하여 변제받을 권리를 부정한 것이 아니다.
Unofficial English translation
This means only that the Korea Workers' Compensation & Welfare Service, which pays unpaid wages on behalf of the business owner who is a bankrupt debtor and subrogates to the rights of the employee pursuant to Article 8 (2) of the Wage Claim Guarantee Act, may not directly receive the distribution proceeds in the auction proceedings following the exercise of the right of separate satisfaction, unlike the employee; it does not deny the right of the Korea Workers' Compensation & Welfare Service to receive payment in preference to other security interest holders.
Factors
- 파산채무자인 사업주를 대신하여 미지급 임금을 지급하고
- 임금채권보장법 제8조 제2항에 따라 근로자의 권리를 대위하는 경우
- 별제권 행사에 따른 경매절차에서 다른 담보물권자보다 우선하여 변제받을 수 있는지 여부(적극)
- 이때 근로복지공단이 배당금을 직접 받을 수 있는지 여부(소극)
Unofficial English translation
• paying unpaid wages on behalf of the business owner who is a bankrupt debtor, and
• where it subrogates to the rights of the employee pursuant to Article 8 (2) of the Wage Claim Guarantee Act
• whether it may receive payment in preference to other security interest holders in the auction proceedings following the exercise of the right of separate satisfaction (affirmative)
• whether the Korea Workers' Compensation & Welfare Service may directly receive the distribution proceeds on that occasion (negative)
Relation to precedent
Follows earlier decisions Stated in the decision
대법원 2022. 8. 31. 선고 2019다200737 판결 참조
Unofficial English translation
See Supreme Court Decision 2019Da200737 decided August 31, 2022.
Decisions referred to
대법원 2022. 8. 31. 선고 2019다200737 판결
Burden of proof
Not addressed Not in the decision
Open question and revisit condition
If the bankruptcy trustee does not hand the distribution over to the Fund, against whom may the Fund enforce its right to that money?
A later decision construing Article 415-2 of the Debtor Rehabilitation and Bankruptcy Act, or the judgment the Seoul High Court delivers on remand, would require this entry to be read again. An amendment to that Article or to Article 8 of the Wages Claim Security Act would have the same effect.
Cross-family AI independent reading & axis check
7 of 8 axes matched GPT-6 Astra (OpenAI, codex CLI) · 2026-10-25
A reader from another model family (GPT-6 Astra), given the official text but not the primary reading, agreed on 7 of the 8 axes; the readings differed on axis 8 (open question and revisit condition).
Axis 8 (Open question and revisit condition): Primary “If the bankruptcy trustee does not hand the distribution over to the Fund, against whom may the Fund enforce its right to that money?” vs Independent “How should the trustee distribute the received funds if the bankruptcy estate is insufficient to satisfy all estate claims?”
Primary asks against whom the Fund may enforce if the trustee withholds the money, while independent asks how the trustee should allocate insufficient funds. These are different unresolved points.
근로복지공단이 파산채무자인 사업주를 대신하여 미지급 임금을 지급하고 임금채권보장법 제8조 제2항에 따라 근로자의 권리를 대위하는 경우, 별제권 행사에 따른 경매절차에서 다른 담보물권자보다 우선하여 변제받을 수 있는지 여부(적극) 및 이때 근로복지공단이 배당금을 직접 받을 수 있는지 여부(소극)Raw responses and comparison record: Protocol · Blind readings (JSONL) · Axis comparison (JSONL) · SHA-256 (JSON)
Lower-court contrast & scope of application
Lower-court reading vs. Supreme Court holding
Lower-court context: The Seoul High Court, in its judgment of 19 August 2021 (2020Na2048209), read the proviso to Article 415-2 as denying that the Fund, enforcing a priority wage claim by subrogation, may be repaid ahead of a secured creditor's separate-satisfaction claim from the proceeds of an auction over bankruptcy-estate property. It therefore held that KRW 215,955,690 of the amount allocated to the bankruptcy trustee, the Fund's subrogated payment for wage-protection money, had to be deleted and paid in full to the plaintiff, which had lodged an objection as a mortgagee.
Supreme Court standard: The Supreme Court held that this was a misreading of Article 415-2 of the Debtor Rehabilitation and Bankruptcy Act that affected the outcome. The Fund's subrogated claim has priority over the plaintiff's separate-satisfaction claim, and only the payment route differs: the distribution goes to the bankruptcy trustee. The distribution table, which placed KRW 215,955,690 second ahead of the plaintiff's mortgage, was free of error, and the whole judgment was reversed and remanded to the Seoul High Court on the unanimous opinion of the participating Justices.
Distinguishing conditions
- A distribution claimed by a worker in person, since the proviso concerns only the Fund's receipt of the distribution directly and Article 415-2 itself gives workers the right to receive it.
- Auction proceeds of property outside the bankruptcy estate, since the reasoning proceeds from the position of the bankruptcy trustee who receives and apportioned the distributions.
- A claim the Fund holds without having paid the workers under Article 8 of the Wages Claim Security Act, so that it is not a subrogated wage claim.
Record verification notes
Confirm that the Fund paid the workers and that what it claims is the wage and retirement claims of the 58 workers, KRW 215,955,690, including final three months' wages and final three years' retirement pay within the priority claims. Check that the auctioned properties belong to the bankruptcy estate of Samwon Onspa Co., Ltd. and that a bankruptcy trustee is administering it, since the payment runs through the trustee. Also check that the objecting party's agent appeared at the distribution hearing on 22 April 2020 and the action was filed within seven days, on 28 April 2020.
From the official text
Points at issue
근로복지공단이 파산채무자인 사업주를 대신하여 미지급 임금을 지급하고 임금채권보장법 제8조 제2항에 따라 근로자의 권리를 대위하는 경우, 별제권 행사에 따른 경매절차에서 다른 담보물권자보다 우선하여 변제받을 수 있는지 여부(적극) 및 이때 근로복지공단이 배당금을 직접 받을 수 있는지 여부(소극)
Unofficial English translation
Where the Korea Workers' Compensation & Welfare Service pays unpaid wages on behalf of the business owner who is a bankrupt debtor and subrogates to the rights of the employee pursuant to Article 8 (2) of the Wage Claim Guarantee Act, whether it may receive payment in preference to other security interest holders in the auction proceedings following the exercise of the right of separate satisfaction (affirmative), and whether the Korea Workers' Compensation & Welfare Service may directly receive the distribution proceeds on that occasion (negative)
Summary of the holding
The official text publishes no summary of the holding for this decision. The quotation and factors in this record are copied verbatim from the points at issue; the evidence for each axis is taken from the points at issue, the order and the reasons.
Order
원심판결을 파기하고, 사건을 서울고등법원에 환송한다.
Unofficial English translation
The judgment of the court below is reversed, and the case is remanded to the Seoul High Court.
Provisions referred to
채무자 회생 및 파산에 관한 법률 제411조, 제412조, 제415조의2, 제473조, 제475조, 제476조, 제477조, 근로기준법 제38조 제2항, 근로자퇴직급여 보장법 제12조 제2항, 임금채권보장법 제8조, 제27조
Read 2026-10-25 · Cross-read 2026-10-25. All quotes matched against the official text. The Chinese-character placeholders the court used for anonymised parties are given in their Korean readings, and parenthetical Chinese-character glosses are omitted.
Every entry is published only after all quotes have been matched character by character against the official text, and audited by an independent second reading from a different model family across all eight axes. Both agreed axes and text-grounded interpretive divergences are recorded openly. The ledger is a research record, not an assessment of the court or advice on any matter.
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