Song Minji, the founder of Pygmalion, a design and publishing company in Seoul, said she had decided not to replace two departing employees and instead had parceled out their responsibilities to the eight who were left and enlisted freelancers.

Though the Moon administration has offered subsidies to small companies like Ms. Song’s to mitigate the jump in labor costs, she said they were insufficient and so complicated to obtain that she has given up trying.

“It would have been better if the policies were applied in steps rather than in one go,” Ms. Song said.

Others say Mr. Moon is moving too slowly. Some union leaders argue that the minimum wage is not rising quickly enough, and they objected to a proposal that would give businesses more flexibility in meeting limits on working hours. On Nov. 21, an estimated 160,000 workers went on a general strike .

“We had high expectations for this government,” said Lee Joo-ho, an executive director at the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions. But now “there is a possibility that the government is backing out or even reversing on the intention of their policies.”