S. Korean workplaces go pet-friendly
In a meeting room at an animal-health company south of Seoul, Baek Na-eun settled into a chair for an interview with a pet cushion beside her. Nacho, her white Pomeranian, sat quietly throughout.
Making money to look after Nacho “is the reason I come to work,” said Baek, 28, who asked for permission to bring her dog to work at Green Cross Veterinary Products almost as soon after she started working there nearly three years ago.
Baek’s routine, once nearly impossible in South Korea’s corporate culture, is becoming less unusual as employers experiment with running pet-friendly offices in a country where just over a quarter of the population now lives with a pet.
A June 2025 report by KB Financial Group’s Management Research Institute found that 5.91 million households, or 26.7 percent of all South Korean households, keep a combined 7.63 million dogs and cats.
The same report found that 87.2 percent of pet-owning households and 68.2 percent of non-owning households agree that “pets are members of the family.”
‘Pawffice’
The animal health company launched a program called “Pawffice” in December last year as a monthly trial tied to its “Happy Family Day,” when employees leave early to spend time with loved ones, including their pets.
The company expanded the policy this year to a daily option after five dogs were brought to the office on the first occasion to a mostly positive response from staff.
Employees who wish to participate are asked to submit documents including a guardian consent form, a preregistration form, and proof of vaccinations. After that, they can bring their animals any day of the week.
About 50 of the company’s 130 employees are based at the Yongin office, where the Pawffice system operates, while the rest work at a plant in Yesan or in sales positions elsewhere. On a typical day, a handful of dogs can be seen napping under desks or playing in a pet zone set up in the middle of the office.
Growing pet market
Cho Yoon-min, 42, head of human resources and the program’s administrator, brings her puppy almost daily. She says she adopted the dog in part because the program gave her the confidence that she would not have to leave the animal home alone all day.
The company, whose mission statement is “Better Life With Healthy Animals,” sees Pawffice as both an employee welfare initiative and a strategic move as it looks to expand further into the growing pet market.
Another visitor was not a dog but a pet lizard named Mela, carried to the office in a cage by Kim Dong-hyun, 30, who works for the company’s special-animals division.
Kim said he began bringing lizards to the office years ago, even before the Pawffice program started, as part of a campaign to win internal approval for a reptile-care business, building a small vivarium on his desk to show colleagues that they were calmer and more sociable than they are often perceived to be.
