Read your payslip
A Korean payslip is dense, in Korean, and legally required to contain six specific things. Most foreign workers never check it against the rates — which is exactly how a wrong deduction survives for years.
The payslip is a legal document, not a courtesy
Since November 19, 2021 your employer has been legally required to hand you an itemized payslip every time wages are paid. Not on request — every time. And the law fixes exactly what has to be on it.
Why is that? Article 48(2) of the Labor Standards Act was added because workers couldn’t check pay they never saw broken down. The six mandatory items are set out in Article 27-2 of the Enforcement Decree, and there is no exemption for small workplaces, for daily workers, or for anyone else — the duty reaches workplaces with fewer than five employees too.
The top half: what you were paid
The payments side breaks into base pay plus a list of allowances. The split matters more than the total, because different lines behave differently for tax, for overtime and for severance.
Why is that? 기본급 is the anchor: it is the largest component of 통상임금, which is what your overtime premiums are multiplied from. Employers who load pay into fixed allowances rather than base pay can end up with a lower 통상임금 and therefore cheaper overtime — which is why it’s worth reading how the top half is split, not just what it adds up to.
The non-taxable lines, and their real caps
Some allowances are excluded from income tax up to a cap. They are worth knowing precisely, because two of the published caps that circulate online — including on the tax office’s own web pages — are out of date, and because electing the flat 19% rate cancels all of them at once.
Why is that? Each exemption sits in its own provision of the Income Tax Act with its own conditions, and they have been amended at different times. The statute governs, not a summary page — and we found two places where the National Tax Service’s own 비과세 근로소득 page still shows superseded figures.
The bottom half: what should come out
Four social insurances and two taxes. Your share of the insurances comes to about 9.72% of pay in 2026 — and three of those rates went up on January 1, so a payslip still using last year’s figures is now wrong in your favor or against you.
Why is that? Each rate is fixed by its own statute or decree and changes on its own schedule. 2026 moved three of them: the pension rate began an eight-year climb, health insurance rose, and long-term care rose with it. Checking the arithmetic takes a minute and is the only way to catch a payroll system that was never updated.
Overtime, night and holiday work
The premiums are statutory percentages on top of your ordinary wage, and the payslip must show the hours they were calculated from. The rule people most often get wrong is the holiday one: the 8-hour threshold is counted within that holiday, not against the weekly 40.
Why is that? Article 56 sets three separate premiums and they stack. Night work between 22:00 and 06:00 adds 50% whether or not the hour is also overtime. And because the premiums are multiples of 통상임금, an understated ordinary wage quietly understates all of them at once.
The tax line has two possible methods
The income tax on your payslip is only an estimate withheld monthly and settled in February. And unlike a Korean colleague, you get to choose which of two methods it is settled under: the ordinary progressive brackets, or a flat 19% on everything.
Why is that? 조세특례제한법 제18조의2 lets a foreign worker elect a flat 19%. It sounds like an obvious win until you read 제3항, which switches off non-taxable treatment, deductions, reductions and tax credits together — and applies the 19% to your gross including what would otherwise be non-taxable. Local income tax then adds 10% on top, making it 20.9% all in. So it is a bad deal at ordinary salaries and a good one at high ones.
If the numbers do not add up
Start by assuming a payroll error rather than bad faith — most wrong payslips come from a system that was never updated for a rate change. But put the question in writing, because a written query is what turns into evidence if it is not an error.
Why is that? Wage protection in Korea comes with being a worker, not with your nationality or visa status, and foreign workers can file complaints on the same terms. The practical difficulty is almost never the law — it is that people ask verbally, get a verbal answer, and have nothing to show six months later.
Common terms
Questions people ask
No. Since November 19, 2021 the Labor Standards Act has required a written payslip every time wages are paid — paper, e-mail, KakaoTalk or an intranet portal all count, but silence does not. The duty applies even at workplaces with fewer than five employees. The fine is graded: ₩300,000 for a first offence, ₩500,000 for a second, ₩1,000,000 from the third — and the Ministry treats the duty as arising per worker per payday, so a year of missing payslips is counted as twelve separate breaches, not one.
On a 2026 payslip your side should be National Pension 4.75% (of pay up to ₩6,590,000/month), health insurance 3.595%, long-term care 13.14% of that health figure, and employment insurance 0.9%. That is about 9.72% in total. Two red flags: anything labelled 산재보험 (industrial accident) coming out of your pay — the employer pays 100% of that — and an employment-insurance line above 0.9%, which usually means the employer’s own 고용안정·직업능력개발 share is being pushed onto you.
It is the hourly base your overtime, night and holiday premiums are calculated from, so if it is understated every premium is understated with it. In December 2024 the Supreme Court changed the test: a bonus is no longer excluded just because it is conditional on being employed on a particular date. That made regular bonuses part of 통상임금 for many workers, which raises the overtime rate. The change applies only from December 19, 2024 forward, so it does not reopen older pay.
Up to ₩200,000 a month, yes — the cap doubled from ₩100,000 on January 1, 2023. But it is either free meals or a cash allowance, not both: the exemption for cash 식대 is limited to workers who are not provided meals. And if you elect the flat 19% tax rate, the exemption disappears entirely and the allowance is taxed like everything else.
Only where a statute or a collective agreement allows it. Article 43 of the Labor Standards Act requires wages to be paid in full, with deductions permitted only under those two headings. Tax, social insurance and union dues qualify. A penalty for breakage, a training cost clawback, or a uniform charge with no statutory basis generally does not — and any deduction at all has to appear on the payslip as an itemized line.