Monthly payroll, the four major insurances, severance pay, year-end settlement and employment rules.
Four of Korea's 2026 public holidays land on a Saturday. Two of them buy a Monday back and two vanish, and the difference is written into a presidential decree that most foreign-owned payrolls have never read.
Three changes to Korean parental leave take effect on 18 September 2026, and a fourth already did on 20 August. Each one moves a date your payroll calendar depends on, and one of them creates a leave entitlement that did not exist before.
A foreign employee in Korea is compulsorily insured on the same terms as a Korean national. There are three ways out of that, only one of them is available to a typical assignee, and none of them applies itself.
Leave that expires unused in Korea usually turns into a cash liability. There is one lawful way to stop that, it has four steps, and a 2020 Supreme Court decision made the last step the one that decides the case.
Korea's working-hour cap and Korea's overtime premium are measured two different ways from the same timesheet. Getting the second one wrong is the more serious offence.
Korea's social insurance rates changed on 1 January 2026, and one of them moved for the first time in 28 years. Here is what each of the four costs an employer and an employee this year, where the ceilings bite, and what a foreign-invested company should be checking on its own payroll.
The Ministry of Employment and Labor gazetted the 2027 minimum wage on 5 August 2026: 10,700 won an hour, 2,236,300 won a month. Here is what it costs a foreign-owned employer, which pay elements count toward the floor, and the obligation that falls due before the year ends.
Korean severance pay is a legal entitlement, not a discretionary payment, and it applies when someone quits. Here is exactly who qualifies, how the calculation works, and what it costs you to get wrong.
