Annual Leave, Sick Leave and Public Holidays in Korea: What the Law Actually Owes You

8 min read

A Soo House member presents a Smart Income Tips session at a community workshop, wearing bunny ears at the podium

In April 2026, Korea's Cabinet approved something that hadn't happened in 18 years: putting Constitution Day back on the paid-holiday calendar. 제헌절 (July 17) had been a national day since the regulation listing paid public holidays dropped it in 2008 — a date people still called a holiday out of habit, even though it carried no legal entitlement to a day off. This year it does again, and whether your employer treated it that way came down to one number most workers never check: how many people your company employs.

That's the pattern behind almost everything in Korea's leave system. The rules are specific, dated, and tied to thresholds — not vague cultural norms about how much time off is "normal" here. Some of what gets treated as a generous employer policy is actually a legal minimum. Some of what gets assumed as guaranteed — paid sick days, for instance — isn't required at all. None of it changes based on your nationality or visa type; Korea's Labor Standards Act (근로기준법) applies to every employee working for a Korean employer, expat or citizen, and Article 6 specifically bars treating a worker worse because of where they're from.

  • 15 daysMinimum paid annual leave after 1 full year, with 80%+ attendance
  • 25 daysMaximum annual leave after long service, Article 60(4)
  • 5+Regular employees a workplace needs before any of this is legally required
  • 0Korea's legal guarantee of paid sick leave for private-sector workers

How annual leave actually builds up

Article 60 of the Labor Standards Act splits annual paid leave into two tracks, and most people only ever hear about the second one.

How annual paid leave builds up under Korea's Labor Standards Act: during your first year you earn one paid day for every full month worked, up to 11 days, and once you pass one year with at least 80% attendance you get 15 days outright, rising by one additional day every two years after year three and capping at 25 — none of this is legally required at a workplace with fewer than 5 regular employees Under 1 year of service 1 paid day for every month worked Up to 11 days before you reach your first year Doesn't shrink the 15 days next 1 year+, 80%+ attendance 15 paid days a year, minimum +1 day every 2 years after year 3 of continuous service Capped at 25 days total Only required at workplaces with 5 or more regular employees. Under 5? It's whatever your contract promises — nothing is guaranteed by law.
Two accrual tracks under the same article: Labor Standards Act Article 60.

Both tracks pay your ordinary wage for the day off, and both can be fined if an employer refuses them outright. Unused leave from either track expires one year after it's earned — but if your employer is the reason you couldn't use it, the clock doesn't count against you.

Unused leave isn't automatically free money Employers can legally wipe out the cash payout for leave you never took — but only by running a strict written notice procedure under Article 61, months ahead of the expiry date, asking you to pick dates and then confirming them in writing if you don't. Skip that paperwork, and any unused days you're still owed when you leave a job convert straight into cash. Don't accept "it just expired" without asking whether your employer actually ran that process.

The public holidays most workers assume are automatic

Chuseok, Lunar New Year, Buddha's Birthday — the red dates on every Korean calendar — only became paid days off at private companies recently, and the rollout happened in stages by company size.

Korea phased paid public holidays into private workplaces in three stages by company size: businesses with 300 or more employees from January 2020, 30 to 299 employees from January 2021, and 5 to 29 employees from January 2022 — workplaces under 5 employees still carry no legal requirement today 300+ employees Paid holidays from Jan 1, 2020 30–299 employees Paid holidays from Jan 1, 2021 5–29 employees Paid holidays from Jan 1, 2022 Under 5 employees: still no legal requirement, even in 2026.
Before 2020, a public holiday at a private company was a favor. Now it's a legal floor — for most companies.

Sundays are left out of that list on purpose, not as an oversight — Article 55(1) already requires a separate weekly paid rest day, so folding Sunday into the public-holiday count would double-pay the same day. Constitution Day joined this same list for the first time since 2008 after the Cabinet approved the change in late April 2026: 2026's July 17 fell on a Friday, giving a three-day run from the 17th through the 19th with no substitute holiday attached, and — for any workplace with 5 or more regular employees — a legal right to be paid for it, not just given it off.

Annual leave

A legal entitlement under Article 60. Accrues automatically from your first month, paid at your normal wage, and an employer who refuses it outright risks a fine.

Sick leave

Not a legal right for private-sector workers at all. If your employer hasn't written it into its own work rules, "sick leave" usually just means spending one of your annual leave days.

The gap nobody explains: there's no legal right to paid sick leave

This is the one that genuinely surprises people moving from a country where paid sick leave is assumed. Korea's Labor Standards Act has no general provision requiring employers to give paid time off for illness that isn't work-related. A company with 10 or more employees has to put some leave policy in writing in its rules of employment under Article 93 — but nothing forces that policy to include paid sick days, or any sick days beyond what's covered by your annual leave. Research from the Korea Institute for Health and Social Affairs has put the share of companies that voluntarily guarantee paid sick leave in the single digits. National civil servants get a separate statutory right to paid sick leave under their own service regulations — a public-sector benefit that doesn't extend to private employment at all. For nearly everyone else, being sick and being on leave draw from the same 15 (or 11, or however many) days.

Does this apply to a part-time job? If your average contracted hours work out to under 15 a week across any four-week stretch, Article 18(3) excludes you from Article 60 entirely — no annual leave accrues on that contract, full stop. Check this against your actual contracted hours, not what you usually work; our part-time work permit guide covers the separate question of whether you're even allowed to take the shifts in the first place.

What Soo House sees in income and leave questions together

Soo House runs paid campaigns, classes and community events for expats and foreign residents across Korea, and the same line that trips people up about severance pay trips them up here too: Article 60 only accrues on an actual employment contract — not a freelance or service-fee arrangement. A member doing regular paid content work for one brand under a 3.3%-withheld service contract isn't building toward 15 days of annual leave any more than they're building toward severance, because nothing on paper says "employee." We built a session called Smart Income Tips specifically to walk members through this line, because campaign work, a part-time shift and an actual job can look identical day to day and still sit on completely different legal footing underneath — and leave is one more place that difference shows up, not just severance.

For anyone on the Employment Permit System (E-9 or H-2), none of this changes: Article 60 applies the same way it does to a Korean coworker at the same company, and so does the nationality-discrimination ban in Article 6. A foreign resident working at a 20-person factory earns the same 15 days after a year that a citizen hired the same day does.

Getting it if it doesn't come

If your employer is refusing leave outright, denying the payout for unused days with no proof of the Article 61 notice process, or treating public holidays as unpaid at a company of 5 or more, the complaint path is the same one used for unpaid wages: raise it in writing with your employer first, then file with the Ministry of Employment and Labor through the 1350 hotline or the Labor Portal if that doesn't resolve it. Our guide to unpaid wages in Korea walks through that process in detail, and our guide to reading your payslip covers how leave and holiday pay should actually show up on it.

Your next hop? Before accepting a leave policy as "just how it is here," check it against Article 60 yourself — a surprising amount of what gets treated as a favor from your employer is actually the legal floor, and a surprising amount of what gets treated as a given isn't required at all.

Checked in October 2026 against the Labor Standards Act (근로기준법), Articles 6, 11, 18, 55, 60 and 61, via the Korea Legislation Research Institute's official English statutory translation (current version, Act No. 21373, amended Feb. 19, 2026); the Ministry of Employment and Labor's own notice on the phased rollout of paid public holidays to private workplaces by employee count; and multiple April 2026 news reports on the Cabinet's approval of the amendment restoring Constitution Day to the public-holiday list, cross-checked against each other for the Cabinet approval date. The Korea Institute for Health and Social Affairs' paid-sick-leave figure is a widely cited 2018 research estimate, not a government statistic tracked annually — treat it as directional. Thresholds, notice procedures and exact effective dates can change; confirm your own situation with the 1350 hotline or a licensed labor consultant (노무사) before relying on any figure here.

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