Read your payslip
A Korean payslip is dense, and it’s all in Korean. By law it has to contain six specific things. Most foreign workers never check it against the actual rates. That is how a wrong deduction survives for years. Let’s go through it line by line.
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 a worker can’t check a figure nobody ever breaks down. The six mandatory items are set out in Article 27-2 of the Enforcement Decree, and there is no exemption for daily workers or for anyone else. It applies to 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 tax, overtime and severance each treat those lines differently.
Why is that? 기본급 (base pay) is the anchor: it’s the biggest part of 통상임금 (ordinary wage), and your overtime premiums are multiples of that. Employers who load pay into fixed allowances rather than base pay can end up with a lower 통상임금 and therefore cheaper overtime. So 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, and the caps are worth knowing. Two of the numbers you’ll find online are out of date — including on the tax office’s own pages. And if you elect the flat 19% rate, every one of these exemptions goes 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. We found two places where the National Tax Service’s own 비과세 근로소득 page still shows superseded figures.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
The four social insurances (4대보험) and two taxes. Your share of the insurances comes to about 9.72% of pay in 2026. Three of those rates went up on January 1, so a payslip still using last year’s figures is now wrong, one way or the other.
Why is that? Each rate is fixed by its own statute or decree and changes on its own schedule. Three of them moved in 2026: the pension rate started an eight-year climb, health insurance went up, and long-term care went up 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 has to 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. The premiums are multiples of 통상임금, so if your ordinary wage is set too low, every premium comes out too low with it.
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 your Korean colleagues, you get to pick how it’s settled: the ordinary progressive brackets, or a flat 19% on everything.
Why is that? Article 18-2 of the Restriction of Special Taxation Act (조세특례제한법) lets a foreign worker elect a flat 19%. It sounds like an obvious win until you read paragraph 3 of that article. That paragraph switches off non-taxable treatment, deductions, reductions and tax credits all at once. The 19% then applies to your whole gross, including the parts that would otherwise be tax-free. Local income tax then adds 10% on top, making it 20.9% all in. So at ordinary salaries the flat rate usually comes out higher than the progressive one. At very high salaries it comes out lower.
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 after a rate change. But put the question in writing. If it turns out not to be an error, that written question is your evidence.
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 hard part is almost never the law. It is that people ask in person, get an answer in person, and have nothing in writing 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, email, 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 offense, ₩500,000 for a second, ₩1,000,000 from the third. The Ministry of Employment and Labor applies it per worker, per payday, so a year of missing payslips counts 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 things to look for. If anything labeled 산재보험 (industrial accident) is coming out of your pay, that is wrong: the employer pays 100% of it. And if the employment-insurance line is above 0.9%, the employer’s own 고용안정·직업능력개발 (job-security and skills-development) share is usually 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 free meals or a cash allowance, not both: the cash 식대 exemption only applies to workers who aren’t given 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.