Departure guarantee insurance in Korea: the payout most EPS workers never collect

6 min read

Every month you work on an E-9 or H-2 visa in Korea, your employer is required by law to set aside 8.3% of your wages into an account with your name on it. Most workers know it exists in the vague way you know your national pension exists — a line item, somewhere, that becomes real money someday. Fewer know that "someday" has a hard deadline, that the money does not find you automatically, and that a real share of it ends up sitting unclaimed after the worker who earned it has already flown home.

  • 8.3%Of monthly wages an EPS employer sets aside from day one
  • 100.5–102.3%Of principal paid out, depending on how long it sat
  • 3 yearsTo claim it before the right disappears — not 5, like the pension refund

What this insurance actually is

출국만기보험, Departure Guarantee Insurance, is the Employment Permit System's stand-in for 퇴직금. Regular employees build severance pay with their employer directly; EPS workers on E-9 or H-2 visas build this instead, through a policy their employer is legally required to open within 15 days of the work contract starting and fund every month at 8.3% of ordinary wages. It is administered by Samsung Fire & Marine, the sole carrier under the Employment Permit System, and it pays out as a lump sum once you have a year or more of service — 100.5% to 102.3% of what was actually paid in, the extra coming from interest.

It is one of four insurance policies an EPS employer must carry — the other three are 귀국비용보험 (return-home cost), 임금체불보증보험 (wage guarantee) and 상해보험 (accident insurance), covered in more depth in our guide to unpaid wages in Korea. This guide is about the one built to replace your severance pay, and specifically about the part nobody explains well: how you actually get it, and what happens if you don't.

Claiming it before you leave

Claiming departure guarantee insurance before leaving Korea: notify the employment center at least one month before departure, request the payout from Samsung Fire at least seven days before departure, then get paid by domestic account, overseas account, or airport cash Notify your employment center 1 month before you leave Request the payout From Samsung Fire, 7+ days before you leave Get paid Domestic account, overseas, or airport cash Choosing airport cash means arriving at least 4 hours before your flight with your ticket.
Two notices, two deadlines, both due before you board — not after.

There are three ways to actually receive the money, and you choose which one when you file:

  • Domestic bank account — fastest if you still have one open, using your alien registration card and account details.
  • Overseas bank account — the account has to be in your own name, matching your passport, once you're back home.
  • Cash at the airport — Samsung Fire pays it out at Incheon on your way through, provided you've filed the request and arrive early enough to process it.
The one that catches people Both notices run on a clock that ends before you leave, not after. Miss the 7-day window with Samsung Fire and you don't lose the money — you just lose the easy version of collecting it, and join everyone filing from abroad instead.

Already left without claiming it?

You are not out of options. The right to claim survives your departure — it just runs on a 3-year statute of limitations from the date the payout became due, under Article 13 of the Act on the Employment of Foreign Workers (외국인근로자의 고용 등에 관한 법률). Inside that window, you file the same way whether you're still in Korea or already home: contact Samsung Fire's dedicated claim center, submit an application form, a passport copy, the page showing your final departure stamp, and your bank account details, and the payout still reaches you by international transfer.

Samsung Fire's foreign-worker claim line takes calls weekdays 9am–6pm KST — 1600-0266 inside Korea, +82-2-2261-8400 from abroad — and accepts documents by fax as well as its foreign-worker claim portal.

After 3 years: dormant, not gone

Timeline after departure: the payout right begins on your departure date, stays claimable through Samsung Fire for 3 years, and after that the money transfers to HRD Korea within one month as dormant insurance, still claimable through HRD Korea's own centers Departure date Insurance payout right begins 3 years to claim Through Samsung Fire, in Korea or from abroad After 3 years Money moves to HRD Korea, dormant Still claimable after the transfer — through HRD Korea's own centers, not the insurer.
The deadline moves the money, not the right to it.

If nobody claims within 3 years, the law requires Samsung Fire to hand the unclaimed balance to 한국산업인력공단, HRD Korea, within one month of the deadline passing — the same statute that sets the 3-year clock also forces the transfer. That money becomes 휴면보험금, dormant insurance, and Korea runs an active program to reunite it with the workers who earned it rather than letting it sit indefinitely: HRD Korea's own overseas centers process these claims, asking for essentially the same documents — an application form, ID, and a bank statement in your name — just routed through HRD Korea instead of the insurer directly.

If you left Korea years ago on an E-9 or H-2 visa and never filed, this is worth ten minutes of your evening to check. It is not a rumor — it is money the law already says belongs to you, sitting exactly where the law says it has to go looking for you.

What Soo House sees, building the pre-departure checklist

Soo House works with expats and foreign residents at every stage of a Korean job, including the one where you're already mentally on the plane. The pension refund we cover in another guide gives you five years and forgives a late start — you can file it from your couch back home whenever you finally get around to it. This one doesn't work that way, and it's the item on our pre-departure checklist we sequence differently for exactly that reason: the easy version of claiming it has to happen before you board, with a real risk that skipping it turns into years of unclaimed money instead of a quick form. Two members finishing the same EPS contract can walk away with wildly different outcomes purely because one of them filed a request seven days early and the other assumed it would sort itself out.

Your Next Hop

If you're still in Korea and your EPS contract is ending, notify your employment center and file with Samsung Fire before your last week, not during it. If you already left — last month or five years ago — call Samsung Fire's claim center or check with HRD Korea before assuming that window closed on you. Inside three years, it's a straightforward claim. Past that, it's still your money — just held by a different desk.

Checked in September 2026 against Samsung Fire & Marine's official claim procedure for foreign workers' departure insurance, HRD Korea's official EPS insurance guide for contribution rates and payout percentages, Article 13 of the Act on the Employment of Foreign Workers via the National Law Information Center for the 3-year statute of limitations and the transfer to HRD Korea, and HRD Korea's own Thailand center page on claiming unclaimed and dormant insurance after departure. Deadlines and payout amounts can change — confirm your own case through Samsung Fire's claim center (1600-0266 domestic, +82-2-2261-8400 from abroad) or the Ministry of Employment and Labor's 1350 hotline before relying on any figure here.

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