Korea Salary Take-Home Pay Calculator & Hourly Wage

About Korea Salary Take-Home Pay Calculator & Hourly Wage

This calculator covers South Korean pay and answers three different questions. What lands in a salaried employee's bank account each month (Salary mode). What an hourly worker is owed for a week or a month, including Korea's paid weekly holiday allowance (Hourly mode). And what a freelancer paid under Korea's 3.3% withholding system should invoice to receive a target amount (Freelance mode).

Salary mode divides the annual salary by 12, subtracts tax-exempt pay such as the meal allowance, and applies the 2026 employee contribution rates: National Pension 4.75%, National Health Insurance 3.595%, long-term care insurance at 13.14% of the health premium, and employment insurance 0.9%. Income tax is looked up directly in the government's simplified withholding table (Annex 2 of the Enforcement Decree of the Income Tax Act), not estimated with a formula, and local income tax is 10% of that amount. The result usually matches the income tax line on a Korean payslip to the won.

If you are used to other systems: Korea withholds tax monthly from a fixed table and settles the real liability in a year-end tax settlement (yeonmal jeongsan) run by the employer each February, much like a PAYE system with an annual reconciliation. Social insurance is split roughly evenly between employer and employee; only the employee half is shown here.

Why your payslip differs by a few thousand won

The National Pension earnings ceiling and floor reset every July. According to the National Pension Service, they were KRW 400,000 to 6,370,000 from July 2025 to June 2026 and are KRW 410,000 to 6,590,000 from July 2026 to June 2027. The calculator applies the band for the selected pay month (by default the current month in Korea time). Above 6.59 million won of monthly taxable pay, the pension deduction is 302,570 won for January to June 2026 pay and 313,020 won from July. Each premium is rounded down to the nearest 10 won, as in the insurers' own simulator (6,590,000 x 4.75% = 313,025, charged as 313,020), so the figures match a payslip to the won.

Contributions are charged on the earnings figure reported to the insurers, not on this month's pay. If your raise takes effect in April, health insurance keeps being deducted at the old level until the report catches up, and the difference is billed in a lump the following April. That lag is the most common reason a new hire or recently promoted employee sees numbers that do not match.

Many Korean employers pay part of the annual package as quarterly or holiday bonuses. In those cases the regular monthly salary is lower than the annual figure divided by 12, and in a bonus month the withholding table pushes income tax much higher. The calculator assumes equal monthly payments, so check bonus months separately.

Dependents and children: a cash-flow choice, not a tax cut

The withholding table is indexed by the number of qualifying family members including yourself. If some of them are children aged 8 to 20, the table amount is reduced further: KRW 20,830 for one child, 45,830 for two, and 33,330 for each additional child, never below zero.

Declaring more dependents lowers what is withheld each month but does not change the tax you owe for the year; that is fixed at year-end settlement. Dual-income couples who both list the same child find one of them repaying the difference in February. For the same reason Korean employees may choose to have 80%, 100% or 120% of the table amount withheld (Enforcement Decree Article 194). The calculator uses 100%.

The KRW 200,000 tax-free meal allowance

A meal allowance of up to KRW 200,000 a month is exempt from income tax for employees who are not otherwise provided meals (Income Tax Act Article 12; the limit rose from 100,000 in 2023). It is also left out of the social insurance base. On a 40 million won salary for a single person, monthly take-home is KRW 2,893,732 with no exempt allowance and 2,935,811 with a 200,000 allowance, a gap of about 42,000 won. The trade-off is a slightly smaller pension record.

Hourly mode: the weekly holiday allowance and the 2026 minimum wage

Under Article 55 of the Labor Standards Act, a worker scheduled for at least 15 hours a week who works all scheduled days earns one paid day off per week, known as juhyu sudang. The calculator sizes it as scheduled weekly hours divided by 40, times 8, capped at 8 hours: 4 paid hours for a 20-hour week, none for a 14-hour week. This is one reason some Korean employers schedule part-timers at 14 hours.

The 2026 minimum wage is KRW 10,320 per hour. The Ministry of Employment and Labor converts it to KRW 2,156,880 a month using 209 hours, which is (40 + 8) hours times 4.345 weeks, rounded. The simple mode multiplies by the unrounded 4.345 and gives 2,152,339 won for a 40-hour week, about 4,500 won lower. Salaried contracts in Korea normally use the 209-hour figure.

The calendar mode lets you tick the days actually worked and checks the 15-hour threshold for each Sunday-to-Saturday week. When a week straddles two months, the holiday pay is split between them in proportion to hours worked; some workplaces instead pay it all in the month the week ends, so both figures are shown. If the hourly rate is below the minimum wage, or holiday pay is missing where it is owed, the shortfall is flagged.

Freelance mode: 3.3% is a prepayment

A Korean business paying a freelancer withholds 3% income tax plus 0.3% local income tax. On a KRW 3,000,000 fee that is 99,000 won, leaving 2,901,000. To receive exactly 3,000,000 you would invoice 3,102,378 won; the reverse calculation searches won by won because each tax is rounded down separately.

The 3.3% is not the final tax. Freelancers file a comprehensive income tax return each May, deduct expenses and allowances, and get back or pay the difference. They also pay national pension and health insurance themselves as regional subscribers rather than through an employer. The 'four insurances' option in this mode shows what an employee would lose on the same gross (excluding income tax) for comparison: 291,520 won on 3,000,000, roughly three times the 3.3% withholding.

Worked examples

How to use it

1. Pick Salary, Hourly or Freelance from the tabs.
2. In Salary mode enter the annual salary, tax-exempt monthly pay, number of dependents and children aged 8-20, or enter a target take-home to solve for the salary.
3. In Hourly mode enter the rate and weekly hours (simple) or the days worked (calendar); in Freelance mode enter a gross fee or a target net amount.

Frequently asked questions

Notes

National Pension uses the band for the pay month: KRW 400,000 to 6,370,000 for January to June 2026 and 410,000 to 6,590,000 from July. Rates are for 2026, so the pay month is limited to 2026.

The health insurance contribution cap, irregular bonuses and year-end settlement are not modelled.

Related guides

• From Gross Salary to Take-Home Pay in South Korea (2026): Social Insurance, Withholding Tables and the 3.3% Freelancer Rule