[Plaintiff, Appellee]
[Defendant, Appellant] Korea Broadcasting System, Attorneys Kim Pyeong-u and 3 others, Counsel for the Defendant
[Judgment Below] Seoul High Court Decision 91Na16022 rendered on December 11, 1991
[Order]
The judgment below is reversed and the case is remanded to the Seoul High Court.
[Reasoning]
The grounds of appeal are examined.
1. According to the reasoning of the judgment below, the court below found, based on the evidence it cited, the following facts: the Plaintiff joined the Defendant Corporation's Jeonju Broadcasting Station on October 10, 1977, worked as a service-position employee, and was appointed as an employed-position employee on August 1, 1978; amid the national turmoil of 1980, the National Security Emergency Countermeasures Committee (國家保衛非常對策委員會), which was launched under the pretext of social purification and establishment of discipline among public officials, established a purification plan and a large-scale purge policy targeting public officials, executives and employees of state-run enterprises and financial institutions, and journalists, and, through the Ministry of Culture and Information, the competent authority, instructed the Defendant Corporation as well to select and dismiss problematic executives and employees; accordingly, the director of the Defendant Corporation's Jeonju Broadcasting Station urged the heads of departments and bureaus and reporters under his supervision to submit letters of resignation from around July of that year, and around August 11 of the same year, instructed, through the station's business division manager, that all general-position employees in every department, including the business division, submit letters of resignation en masse; the court below found that, although the Plaintiff had no intention of resigning, she felt compelled, due to the urging by the Defendant Corporation asserting that this was a national policy and the oppressive social atmosphere of the time, to submit her letter of resignation on August 11, 1980, together with other general-position employees, and that it was accepted on August 12 of the same month by the aforementioned director of the Jeonju Broadcasting Station, who held the power of appointment and dismissal, resulting in her separation being processed as a voluntary resignation. The court below then held that even if an employer terminates an employment relationship in the form of a voluntary resignation by receiving and accepting a letter of resignation from an employee, if the employee, who had no intention of resigning, was compelled to submit the letter of resignation, this in substance constitutes termination of the employment relationship by the employer's unilateral intention and thus amounts to a dismissal, and a dismissal made without justifiable grounds is an unfair dismissal; in light of the circumstances of the voluntary resignation disposition as found above, the court below determined that the voluntary resignation disposition taken by the Defendant against the Plaintiff constitutes a dismissal despite its form as a voluntary resignation, and since the Defendant made no assertion or proof whatsoever, in this case, as to the existence of justifiable grounds for dismissing the Plaintiff or as to having dismissed her through a legitimate disciplinary procedure, the said voluntary resignation disposition is void as a matter of course as an unfair dismissal.
Upon examination of the record, the above fact-finding and determination by the court below are justified, and there is no illegality therein due to misapprehension of the rules of evidence resulting in mistake of fact, or misapprehension of the legal principles concerning unfair dismissal. This ground of appeal is without merit.
2. The Defendant argued that since the Plaintiff, after being separated as a voluntary resignation as described above, received the prescribed retirement allowance from the Defendant Corporation without raising any objection or reservation, and moreover has since married and is living as an ordinary housewife managing her household, having spent the intervening period without raising any particular objection to the Defendant Corporation, the filing of this lawsuit disputing the validity of the said voluntary resignation at a point in time more than ten years after the acceptance of the resignation letter is impermissible as being contrary to the principle of good faith or the principle of estoppel. The court below, while acknowledging the facts asserted by the Defendant, rejected this argument on the ground that these facts alone could not establish that the filing of this lawsuit was contrary to the principle of good faith or the principle of estoppel.
However, if an employee dismissed by an employer receives a retirement allowance, etc. without raising any reservation of objection or condition, then, absent special circumstances, the employee shall be deemed to have acknowledged the dismissal disposition as valid, and therefore, filing a lawsuit disputing the validity of the dismissal after a long period of time has passed since then is contrary to the principle of good faith or the principle of estoppel (see this Court's Decisions 91Da39085 rendered on March 13, 1992, and 92Da3670 rendered on May 26, 1992, among others). In this case, where there are no special objective circumstances found from which it could be recognized that the Plaintiff, even while receiving the retirement allowance as described above, was disputing, even implicitly, the validity of the said voluntary resignation, which amounted to a dismissal, the court below's summary rejection of the Defendant's above argument concerning violation of the principle of good faith, etc., constitutes an illegality that affected the judgment by misapprehending the legal principles concerning the principle of good faith or the principle of estoppel. Accordingly, the ground of appeal pointing this out is with merit.
3. Therefore, the judgment below is reversed and the case is remanded to the court below, the Justices unanimously concurring, as set forth in the Order.
Justice Kim Sang-won (Presiding Justice), Park Woo-dong, Yoon Young-chul, Park Man-ho