South Korea's Supreme Court has ruled that steelmaker POSCO (one of the world's largest steel producers, headquartered in South Korea) must directly employ 215 subcontract workers who had worked at its mills for more than two years. The workers, part of a group of 223 who filed suits in 2017 seeking direct employment at POSCO's facilities in Pohang and Gwangyang, were found to be substantively integrated into the company's core operations — a legal threshold that triggers mandatory direct hiring under South Korean labour law. The ruling marks the latest in a series of similar legal defeats for POSCO, which in 2022 was also ordered by the top court to directly hire 55 subcontract workers.