Reading a Korean payslip

The shape of the document

A Korean payslip (급여명세서) has two columns. On the left, 지급 — what you are paid. On the right, 공제 — what is taken off. The bottom line, 실지급액 or 차인지급액, is what reaches your account.

Employers are required to itemise this rather than simply announce a net figure, and to explain how each deduction was calculated. If what you receive is a single number in a message, that is not compliant, and asking for a proper payslip is a reasonable request rather than a confrontational one.

The payments side

• 기본급 — base salary. The contractual monthly figure. Most other things are calculated from it.
• 수당 — allowances. A catch-all: 식대 (meal), 교통비 (transport), 직책수당 (position), 자격수당 (qualification). Some allowances are non-taxable up to a statutory limit, which is why employers like them.
• 연장·야간·휴일근로수당 — overtime, night and holiday work. Statutory premium rates apply on top of the hourly base. If you work these hours and the line is absent, that is worth a question.
• 상여금 — bonus. Contractual or discretionary. A "13th month" arrangement usually appears here rather than in base salary, which matters because severance and some insurance bases are calculated on average wage.

The distinction that matters most is between 기본급 and everything else. Severance entitlement, overtime premiums and several insurance bases are computed from wage definitions that not all allowances feed into. A contract that keeps base salary low and allowances high is quietly reducing several things you are owed — see reading a Korean employment contract.

The four insurances

Korea runs four national insurances, universally called 4대보험. Three are shared between you and your employer; the fourth is paid entirely by the employer and should never appear as a deduction from your pay.

Added together, the employee side comes to roughly 9.7% of salary below the pension ceiling. Above that ceiling the pension contribution stops growing, so the effective percentage falls as salary rises — one of several reasons a high earner's payslip does not scale linearly with a lower one's.

Rates last reviewed 31 July 2026 against Ministry of Health and Welfare notices and the NPS. The pension rate rises 0.5 percentage points every January until it reaches 13% in 2033, and the pension base floor and ceiling are re-notified each March to apply from 1 July — so both of these change on a schedule.

The pension line, and the two things people misread

It is charged on a standard monthly income (기준소득월액), not on this month's pay. That figure is set annually from your previous year's earnings and then held constant, which is why your pension deduction does not move when you get a bonus, and why it can look wrong in your first year.

It is capped. Once your standard monthly income exceeds ₩6,590,000, the contribution stops increasing. Two colleagues earning ₩7m and ₩12m pay identical pension contributions.

Whether the money is recoverable when you leave Korea depends on your nationality, not your visa. Countries with a social security agreement with Korea, and countries that offer reciprocal treatment, allow a lump-sum refund on departure; others do not. This is worth establishing early rather than at the airport — the lump-sum refund guide covers who qualifies and how to claim.

The income tax line is a guess

소득세 on your payslip is withholding, not your tax. Your employer looks your salary and declared dependants up in the NTS simplified withholding table and deducts that. Alongside it sits 지방소득세, the local income tax, at exactly 10% of the income tax figure.

Nobody is trying to be precise here, because precision is not the point. The real calculation happens once a year at the year-end settlement, when your actual deductions — dependants, medical spending, education, housing, pension contributions, credit card usage — are applied and the difference is refunded or collected.

Two consequences worth acting on. A large February refund is not a windfall; it is your own money returned after an interest-free year. And if you elected the 19% flat rate, your withholding should reflect that election — 19% plus the 10% local surtax on it, giving an effective 20.9%, applied to gross with no deductions at all. If your payslip shows ordinary withholding while you believe you elected the flat rate, one of those two things is wrong. The flat tax comparison shows what each regime produces on your salary.

Checking your employer has it right

This is the practical reason to read a payslip at all. Three checks, none of which takes long.

1. Confirm you are actually enrolled. Deductions appearing on a payslip do not prove the money reached the insurers. Each of the four bodies lets you check your own record — the NHIS on 1577-1000 and the NPS on 1355 both answer in English. A deduction with no corresponding enrolment is a serious problem, and it is not rare at very small employers.
2. Recalculate one month by hand. Multiply gross by the rates in the table above. If your health insurance line is materially different from 3.595% of salary, ask why — the answer is usually a non-taxable allowance being excluded from the base, which is legitimate, but it should be explicable.
3. Check the industrial accident line does not exist. 산재보험 is entirely the employer's cost. Seeing it deducted is a straightforward error.

Where something is wrong, raise it in writing with payroll first — most discrepancies are genuine mistakes and are fixed in the next cycle. Where it is not fixed, the Ministry of Employment and Labor helpline on 1350 handles wage and insurance complaints in English, and using it is normal.

Keep them

Payslips are evidence, and Korean administrative processes ask for evidence constantly. Income is the largest single item on the F-2-7 points table, an F-5 application wants income history, a landlord may want proof of earnings, and sending money abroad beyond the undocumented limit needs income evidence at the bank.

Save the PDF each month somewhere that survives changing jobs. Reconstructing three years of payslips from an employer you have left is possible and unpleasant; the withholding receipt (원천징수영수증) issued after each year-end settlement is the compact summary version, and it is worth keeping separately.

Source: National Tax Service · Last reviewed 14 August 2026