Hiring employees in South Korea (2026)

Before anyone in South Korea gets their first payday, you need a legal employer on the ground: either your own Korean entity or an Employer of Record (EOR) that employs the person on your behalf. The catch is that Korean law regulates temporary agency work by job category and requires ministry permission, and having someone work under your direction can fall into that bucket. So ask any provider to assess the actual role and supervision before you treat the EOR route as a given.

Once that is settled, the numbers are fairly manageable. Employer social contributions run at 10.5% of gross, and the minimum wage is KRW2,156,880 a month in 2026. A 13th-month salary is customary rather than mandatory, so check the contract before budgeting for it. The statutory working week is 40 hours, and 15 paid annual leave days is the minimum.

On top of gross pay, your main extra cost is employer social contributions of 10.5% of gross, covering the National Pension, health insurance, long-term care and employment insurance. The employment insurance charge depends on your company's size category, so confirm which one applies. Retirement benefit funding and industrial accident insurance are separate costs that also sit on top of salary. Employees pay their own share too, at 9.7% of gross.

A few South Korea rules tend to catch foreign employers off guard, so check these before you sign anything:

• Dismissal needs a justifiable reason. Where the Labor Standards Act applies, you must give the reason and effective date in writing, and paying notice or finishing probation does not change that. Covered employees can challenge a dismissal at the Labor Relations Commission within three months, and the remedy can include reinstatement and back pay.
• Redundancy has a long lead time. Managerial dismissals require consulting the union or employee representative at least 50 days beforehand, on top of individual notice. Average statutory notice across the World Bank tenure points is 4.3 weeks, and average severance is 22.9 weeks.
• Fixed-term contracts cap out at two years. Successive contracts count together, and carrying on past that normally creates indefinite employment unless an exception applies. It is not a limit of one renewal.
• The minimum wage rises next year. The 2027 rate is KRW10,700 an hour, or KRW2,236,300 a month, from 1 January 2027. Keep payroll on the 2026 rate until then, but build the new figure into any offer or budget that runs past year end.