Crossing 15 Hours a Week Adds a Paid Holiday to Korean Part-Time Wages

The Scene

Korean dramas and variety shows keep putting their characters behind a convenience-store counter or a cafe bar at two in the morning, and the pay for that shift is almost never part of the story. Viewers who later take that job in Korea find that the shift itself is the smaller question, because Korean law does not price a part-time week by multiplying hours by a rate.

Two statutes decide the number. The Minimum Wage Act sets the floor under the hourly rate and is re-set by public notice every August. The Labor Standards Act decides whether a paid weekly holiday is attached to that rate at all, and it draws the line at an average of fifteen contractual hours a week. One hour on either side of that line changes the weekly figure by far more than one hour of work.

What the Rule Actually Says

The floor, and how it is set

Under Article 6(1) of the Minimum Wage Act, an employer must pay a covered employee at least the minimum wage amount. Article 6(3) makes the enforcement mechanism unusually direct: where a labour contract stipulates a wage below the minimum, that stipulation is null and void, and the invalidated part is treated as stipulating the minimum wage instead. The contract is not voided and the worker is not sent away to sue for damages; the number in the contract is replaced by operation of the statute.

Article 28(1) puts a criminal penalty behind that. Paying below the minimum, or cutting a previous wage on account of the Act, is punishable by imprisonment with labour for not more than three years or by a fine not exceeding 20 million won, and the Act states that both may be imposed. Article 11 adds a disclosure duty: an employer covered by the minimum wage must inform workers of the applicable amount by displaying it in a conspicuous place or by other appropriate means.

The amount itself is not in the statute. Article 10(1) requires the Minister of Employment and Labor to publish the determined minimum wage without delay, and Article 10(2) provides that it enters into force from 1 January of the following year. That second paragraph carries a proviso: the Minister may, if deemed necessary, determine a separate effective date for each type of business, taking the wage bargaining period into account. Neither of the two notices now in play uses that power, so in practice the figure a worker is paid in December and the figure the same worker is paid in January come from two different public notices with nothing in between.

The fifteen-hour line

The Labor Standards Act sets the ordinary working week in Article 50: not more than 40 hours a week and not more than 8 hours a day, excluding recess. Article 11 keeps that ceiling out of a workplace with four or fewer regular employees. Article 55 then requires an employer to allow workers at least one paid holiday per week on average. That paid holiday is the reason a Korean weekly wage is usually larger than hours multiplied by rate.

Article 18 governs part-time work, and it does two separate things. Article 18(1) states that the terms and conditions of a part-time employee are determined on the basis of a relative ratio computed in comparison to the working hours of full-time employees — the pro-rating principle. Article 18(3) then carves out a group entirely: Articles 55 and 60 shall not apply to employees whose contractual work hours per week, on an average of four weeks, are less than 15 hours. Article 60 is annual paid leave. So below that line, the paid weekly holiday and the annual leave entitlement are both switched off, while the minimum hourly floor continues to apply in full.

The test is written as a four-week average of contractual hours, not as a count of hours actually worked in a single week. A schedule that is written at 16 hours a week and occasionally runs short is not the same case as a schedule written at 14 hours that occasionally runs long, and the article points at the contract first.

There is a second condition that sits underneath Article 55 and is easy to miss, because it lives in the Presidential Decree rather than the Act. Article 30 of the Enforcement Decree of the Labor Standards Act provides that the paid holiday under Article 55 of the Act shall be granted to a person who has shown perfect attendance of the contractual working days during one week. Crossing fifteen hours creates the entitlement; attendance in the individual week decides whether it is earned in that week.

A third question sits behind both. Article 11(1) applies the Labor Standards Act to businesses that regularly employ not less than five, and Article 11(2) leaves it to Presidential Decree to say which provisions reach a business with four or fewer; Article 7 of the Enforcement Decree puts that list in attached Table 1. On the tabulation published by the Seoul Labor Rights Center, a body of the Seoul Metropolitan Government, Article 55 is on that list and Articles 56 and 60 are not. The paid weekly holiday therefore survives in a two-person cafe. The night premium and the annual leave do not.

The Numbers

The two rates now in play

Two public notices are live at the same time as of late 2026. Public notice 2025-47, gazetted on 5 August 2025, set the rate applying through 2026 at 10,320 won an hour, an increase of 290 won or 2.9 per cent, and stated the monthly equivalent as 2,156,880 won on a basis of 40 contractual hours a week, or 209 hours a month. The notice published on 5 August 2026 set the 2027 rate at 10,700 won an hour, an increase of 380 won or 3.7 per cent, with a monthly equivalent of 2,236,300 won on the same 209-hour basis. Both apply to every workplace without distinction by industry.

The 209-hour basis is worth unpacking, because it is where the weekly holiday shows up in a monthly figure. A year has 365 divided by 7, or about 52.14 weeks, which is about 4.345 weeks a month. A full-time week is 40 contractual hours plus 8 paid holiday hours, or 48 paid hours. Multiplied out, 48 times 4.345 is 208.57, which the ministry rounds up to 209. Roughly 17 per cent of the headline monthly figure is not time spent at work at all.

What one hour does

Take a schedule written at 14 contractual hours a week at the 2026 rate. Article 18(3) applies, Article 55 does not, and the week is 14 times 10,320, or 144,480 won.

Now write the same schedule at 15 hours. Article 18(3) no longer excludes it, so Article 55 applies and the paid holiday is pro-rated on the Article 18(1) ratio: 15 over 40 of eight hours is three hours. The week becomes 15 hours at 10,320, or 154,800 won, plus three holiday hours at 10,320, or 30,960 won, for a total of 185,760 won.

• The gap is 41,280 won a week for one extra contractual hour.
• Hours rise 7.1 per cent; the weekly figure rises 28.6 per cent.
• The effective rate goes from 10,320 to 12,384 won an hour, exactly 1.2 times the statutory floor, because 8 divided by 40 adds one fifth.
• Converted at 4.345 weeks, the month goes from about 627,800 won to about 807,171 won — a difference of roughly 179,371 won a month.

The 1.2 multiplier is not written anywhere in the statute. It falls out of Article 55 combined with the Article 18(1) ratio, and it holds for any schedule spread over five equal days up to full time. That is also why the January step-up is larger than the headline percentage suggests for anyone above the line: moving from 10,320 to 10,700 is 380 won an hour, but at 15 contractual hours a week the paid holiday carries it to 6,840 won a week, or about 356,657 won over a full year.

The floor in context

The rate has moved a long way in a short time, which is why guidance written even three years ago is usually wrong on the number.

Between the 2011 and 2027 application years the floor rose from 4,320 to 10,700 won, a factor of 2.48 and a compound 5.8 per cent a year. About one sixth of that rise arrived in one step: the 2018 rate was 1,060 won above 2017, an increase of 16.4 per cent, while the four most recent decisions have run between 1.7 and 3.7 per cent. Guidance written against the 2018 figure is out by thousands of won an hour.

Two more figures put the penalty in scale. The 20 million won maximum fine under Article 28(1) is equal to about 1,938 hours of work at the 2026 floor, or roughly 48 full-time weeks. The probationary reduction runs the other way. Article 5(2) of the Minimum Wage Act permits a reduced amount and Article 3 of its Enforcement Decree sets the reduction at 10 per cent, which is 9,288 won an hour in 2026. Two conditions gate it: the employment contract must run for one year or longer, and the worker must be within three months of starting probation. Article 5(2) then adds a proviso that lands on exactly the counter this article opened with — the reduction does not apply to workers engaged in simple labour in the job categories the Minister of Employment and Labor designates by public notice, which are the occupations in major group 9 of the Korean Standard Classification of Occupations. The word "probation" in a contract does not by itself produce a lower floor.

Where This Doesn't Apply

The fifteen-hour test is an average, and it is about contractual hours. Article 18(3) reads on contractual work hours per week averaged over four weeks. A single quiet week does not move a schedule below the line, and a single busy week does not move one above it.

Crossing the line does not guarantee the holiday pay in every week. Article 30 of the Enforcement Decree conditions the Article 55 holiday on perfect attendance of the contractual working days in that week. The entitlement and the individual week's payment are two different questions.

Workplace size changes which articles apply at all. The split set out above is the one that matters here: at four or fewer regular employees Article 55 still reaches the workplace, so the paid weekly holiday holds, while Articles 56 and 60 drop away with the night premium and the annual leave. The 1.2 multiplier is narrower: it is pro-rated against a 40-hour comparator, which Article 50 does not guarantee at this size. Anyone in a small independent store is therefore asking a narrower question than anyone in a chain with a large payroll.

The premium provisions are separate from the floor, and they are not one rule. Article 56(1) adds 50 per cent or more of ordinary wages for extended work. Article 56(2) splits holiday work, at 50 per cent for the first eight hours and 100 per cent beyond eight. Article 56(3) adds 50 per cent or more for night work, which the article fixes at work between 10 p.m. and 6 a.m. A night hour at the 2026 floor therefore carries 15,480 won — but only where Article 56 reaches the workplace at all, and it does not reach one with four or fewer regular employees. The hour on the clock does not settle it.

Not every payment counts toward the minimum wage comparison. Article 6(4) of the Minimum Wage Act defines which regularly paid wages are included when a paycheque is tested against the floor, and the boundaries there have been changed by amendment more than once. A payslip that appears to clear the floor in total may not clear it once the comparison is made on the statutory basis.

Immigration status is a separate track. Whether a person holding a particular status of stay may take part-time work at all, and on what conditions, is decided under immigration law and administered by the immigration authorities, not by the Labor Standards Act. The wage rules described here say nothing about whether the work is permitted in the first place.

Numbers to Re-check

• The hourly rate, every 1 January. Article 10 of the Minimum Wage Act fixes the changeover date, and the amount is set by a public notice published the previous August.
• The monthly equivalent. 2,156,880 won for 2026 and 2,236,300 won for 2027, both on the 209-hour basis, are stated in the ministry's own announcements and move with the rate.
• Article numbering. Both statutes are amended frequently, and paragraph numbering shifts with an amendment.
• Which consolidation each text came from. The Labor Standards Act read for this article carried an enforcement date of 20 August 2026. The Enforcement Decree available in the translated database is an older consolidation and the Minimum Wage Act translation there is the 2020 version, so the workplace-size scope, the Article 56 structure and the probation proviso above are taken from current Korean government guidance rather than from those translations.

If You Are Actually in This Situation

The first thing to establish is the number written in the contract, not the number of hours actually worked last month, because Article 18(3) is drafted on contractual hours averaged over four weeks. A schedule sitting at 14 hours and a schedule sitting at 15 hours are two different legal positions, and the second one carries the Article 55 entitlement that produces the 1.2 multiplier.

The second is workplace size, because Article 11 decides how much of the Labor Standards Act applies before any of the rest of it can be argued. The third is the rate in force for the calendar year, which is the figure in the current public notice rather than the one that was current when the job started.

The bodies with authority here are the Ministry of Employment and Labor, whose regional labour offices handle wage complaints and whose public notices carry the rate, and the Minimum Wage Commission, which publishes the year-by-year decisions the chart is drawn from. Employers separately carry the Article 11 duty to display the applicable amount where workers can see it, which makes the posted notice a reasonable first place to check what an employer believes the rate to be.

This article describes published statutory text, an enforcement decree and ministry public notices. It is not legal or tax advice, and how these provisions apply to an individual contract is determined on the facts of that contract. Anyone facing a specific wage question should consult the regional labour office with jurisdiction or a qualified professional.