Editorial policy
What we source from, how often we check it, what we do when we get something wrong, and why the numbers live in versioned data files rather than in prose.
Sources
Korean immigration, tax and social insurance rules are published in Korean by the ministries that administer them. Those are our sources. English-language government pages are used for terminology, but where an English page and the Korean original differ, the Korean original governs.
| Subject | Primary source |
|---|---|
| Visas, status of stay, points systems | HiKorea and Ministry of Justice notices |
| Income tax, year-end settlement, the flat-rate election | National Tax Service, and the Restriction of Special Taxation Act |
| Health insurance | NHIS |
| Pension and lump-sum refunds | NPS |
| Employment law | Ministry of Employment and Labor |
| Addresses and romanization | Korean address information system, and the Revised Romanization notice |
| Statute text | Korea Law Translation Center |
| Driving licences | Korea Road Traffic Authority |
We do not source from other English-language expat sites, content aggregators, or AI-generated summaries. If a claim cannot be traced to a Korean authority or a statute, it does not go on the site — or it is explicitly labelled as practice rather than rule.
Numbers live in data, not prose
Every rate, threshold, point value and bracket on this site comes from a JSON file in /data.
Each file carries:
- The issuing authority and a link to it.
- The tax year or notice version it represents.
- A
lastRevieweddate. - A
verifiedflag, and explicit_verifynotes marking every figure that still needs checking against the primary source.
This is not housekeeping — it is what makes the site maintainable. When the Ministry of Justice reissues the F-2-7 table, one file changes and the calculator, the visa page and every guide that quotes a figure update together. Sites that hard-code numbers into prose cannot do this, which is why they drift.
Review schedule
| What | When | Why then |
|---|---|---|
| Income tax brackets and deductions | Every January | Tax law amendments take effect with the new tax year |
| Health insurance premium rate | Every January | NHIS sets the rate each December for the following year |
| National pension base ceiling and floor | Every July | NPS revises them annually in July |
| F-2-7 points table | On notice, checked twice yearly | Reissued by ministerial notice without a fixed schedule |
| Visa requirements | Twice yearly, and on notice | E-7 occupation codes and income floors move most often |
| Everything else | Annually | Routine |
How the calculators are tested
The logic behind every tool is separated from the page it renders on, and covered by an automated test suite that runs on each build. It currently holds over two hundred assertions, including:
- Boundary cases around the 80-point F-2-7 cut-off — 79 must fail, 80 must pass, and a penalty must be able to push a passing profile back under.
- Structural checks on the point table itself — category maxima must sum to the stated group totals, and no single option may exceed its category ceiling.
- Tax bracket continuity — at every bracket boundary the tax computed with the lower and the upper bracket must agree to within one won, which is what the quick-deduction form guarantees.
- Declared tax scenarios — the rate file carries worked cases with the expected verdict, and the build fails if the calculator disagrees with any of them.
- Romanization against published examples — 종로 → Jongno, 신라 → Silla, 왕십리 → Wangsimni and the rest of the sound-change appendix.
A failing test blocks the build. This is the mechanism by which a data update that breaks an assumption gets caught before it reaches a reader.
What we do not know, we say
Korean administrative practice varies by regional office, by branch and sometimes by individual officer. Where that is true we say so rather than presenting one office's practice as the rule. Where a figure is under review, the page says it is under review.
Phrases like "usually", "in practice" and "varies by office" in our text are not hedging. They are accurate descriptions of a system that genuinely has discretion in it.
Corrections
When something is wrong we fix the page and update its review date. We do not silently edit and leave the original date in place — a page that claims to have been reviewed last January when it was actually corrected last week is misleading in exactly the way this site exists to avoid.
Send corrections to the address on the contact page. A correction with a link to the authority gets acted on the same week.
Advertising and independence
- The site is supported by display advertising served by an ad network. We do not choose the advertisers.
- We do not accept sponsored posts, paid links, guest articles or paid placement in any comparison.
- There are no affiliate links anywhere on the site. The bank comparison and the mobile carrier comparison earn us nothing regardless of what you choose.
- No advertiser sees content before publication or has any influence over it.
If that ever changes, it will be disclosed on this page and on the affected content, prominently.
Use of AI
Drafting assistance is used, as it is at most publishers now. It does not change the sourcing rule: every factual claim is traced to a primary source before publication, and the calculators are hand-written, rule-based code with a test suite — not model output. Nothing on this site is published because a language model asserted it.