Korea's Annual Leave Rules Have an Entry Condition: Five Regularly Employed Workers

The Scene

Korean workplace dramas keep returning to the same small beat: a character looks at a leave balance that exists on paper and says it cannot be taken. Misaeng is the title most often named when the subject comes up, and that is where the television part of this article ends.

The balance itself is not a plot device. It is produced by Article 60 of the Labor Standards Act, which grants leave in two different currencies depending on how long the employee has been there, and by Article 11, which decides whether Article 60 reaches the workplace at all. English-language explanations of Korean leave are plentiful; ones that put the article number and the five-employee boundary in the same paragraph are not. That boundary is what changes the answer from "fifteen days" to "none the Act guarantees."

What the Rule Actually Says

Article 60 runs on two tracks. The English text of the Korea Legislation Research Institute, Labor Standards Act (English translation) states paragraph (1) as: "Every employer shall grant any employee who has worked not less than 80 percent of one year a paid leave of 15 days." Paragraph (2) covers everyone the first paragraph misses: "Every employer shall grant any employee who has continuously worked for less than one year or who has worked less than 80 percent of one year one paid-leave day for each month during which he or she has continuously worked."

One translation note matters here, because it is the difference between a day earned and a day forfeited. The enacted Korean text of Article 60(2), as carried in the article viewer at the Ministry of Government Legislation, National Law Information Center: Labor Standards Act Article 60, reads: "사용자는 계속하여 근로한 기간이 1년 미만인 근로자 또는 1년간 80퍼센트 미만 출근한 근로자에게 1개월 개근 시 1일의 유급휴가를 주어야 한다." The operative condition is 1개월 개근 — a full month worked without absence. The KLRI English renders the same clause as "for each month during which he or she has continuously worked," which drops the attendance condition. The Korean is the enacted text; the English is a translation of it.

Long service adds days on a fixed step. Article 60(4): "Every employer shall grant any employee who has continuously worked for not less than three years the paid-leave days that are calculated by adding one day for every two continuously working years not including the first one year to the 15 paid-leave days referred to in paragraph (1). In such cases, the total number of paid-leave days, including the additional paid-leave days, shall not exceed 25 days."

Timing belongs to the employee, with one exception written into the same sentence. Article 60(5) requires the employer to grant leave "at the time when an employee files a claim therefor, and pay the employee an ordinary wage or an average wage during the period of paid leave as prescribed by the rules of employment, etc.: Provided, That in the event that granting the employee a paid leave at the time when such employee wants to take the paid leave greatly impedes the business operation, the relevant employer may change the time of the paid leave." The employer may move the date. Nothing in that proviso lets the employer cancel the day.

Days do expire, and again the proviso carries the weight. Article 60(7): the leave under paragraphs (1), (2) and (4) "shall, if it is not taken for one year (the paid leave under paragraph (2) of an employee who has continuously worked for less than one year refers to the period until the end of the first one year of employment), be terminated by time limitation: Provided, That the same shall not apply where the paid leave is not taken for reasons attributable to the employer."

Article 61 is the machinery that lets an employer convert unused days into nothing without owing compensation, and it is entirely made of deadlines. Under Article 61(1), where leave lapses under the main clause of Article 60(7) after the employer has taken the listed steps, the employer "shall not be liable to indemnify the employee for his or her failure to take the paid leave, which shall be deemed not to fall under the reasons attributable to the employer under the proviso of Article 60 (7)". Step one requires the employer to inform each employee of untaken days and urge them in writing to set and notify a leave period, "within 10 days as of the date prior to six months before the period under the main clause of Article 60 (7) expires". If the employee does not answer within ten days, step two requires the employer to set the period and notify it in writing "not later than two months before the period under the main clause of Article 60 (7) expires".

First-year employees get a compressed version. Article 61(2) subparagraph 1 requires the written urging "within 10 days as of the date prior to three months before the first one year of employment period ends: Provided, That the employee shall be urged to notify the employer regarding the paid leave occurring after the employer's written urge, within five days as of the date prior to one month before the first one year of employment period ends".

All of that presupposes the Act applies. Article 11(1): "This Act shall apply to all businesses or workplaces in which not less than five employees are regularly employed: Provided, That this Act shall neither apply to any business or workplace in which only the employer's blood relatives living together are engaged, nor to servants hired for the employer's domestic works." Article 11(2) leaves a door: "With respect to a business or workplace in which not more than four employees are regularly employed, some provisions of this Act may apply as prescribed by Presidential Decree."

That Presidential Decree is short and decisive. Article 7 of the Korea Legislation Research Institute, Enforcement Decree of the Labor Standards Act (English translation) reads: "The provisions of the Act applicable pursuant to Article 11 (2) of the Act to any business or workplace that regularly employs four or less employees shall be as specified in Appendix 1." Appendix 1 is a closed list. Anything absent from it is outside the Act for a workplace of four or fewer.

The Numbers

Start with the first two years, because that is where most confusion sits. Under Article 60(2), a day accrues at the end of each month of full attendance while continuous service is still under one year. Eleven completed months fall entirely inside "less than one year." The twelfth completed month is one year exactly, at which point Article 60(1) takes over and grants fifteen days for the year ahead, provided the 80 percent attendance test is met.

Second, the long-service step. Article 60(4) adds one day for every two years of continuous service beyond the first, starting at three years, and stops at twenty-five. Working the arithmetic out: 16 days at three and four years, 17 at five and six, and so on in pairs. The uncapped formula reaches exactly 25 at twenty-one years of continuous service, and would reach 26 at twenty-three years — which is where the ceiling in the second sentence of Article 60(4) starts doing work. From year twenty-one onward the number does not move again.

Third, the 80 percent test is a cliff rather than a slope. Article 60(1) uses attendance across prescribed working days, so the threshold depends on the schedule. For a worker with 250 prescribed working days in the year, 80 percent is 200 days; at 200 days present the entitlement is fifteen days, and at 199 it drops to whatever Article 60(2) produces — at most twelve days for that year, and in practice fewer, because absences heavy enough to break the 80 percent test usually break full-attendance months as well. At 240 prescribed days it is 192; at 260, 208. Article 60(6) pulls five categories back inside the attendance count, and its Korean text has been amended twice since the published English translation was made: time off for a work-related injury or sickness; maternity leave under Article 74(1) through (3); child-care leave under Article 19 of the Equal Employment Opportunity and Work-Family Balance Assistance Act; the hours dropped under the reduced-hours arrangement for child-care under Article 19-2(1) of that Act; and the hours dropped under the reduced-hours arrangement during pregnancy under Article 74(7).

Fourth, the Article 61 calendar. For a leave period ending 31 December 2026, six months before expiry is 1 July, so the written urging must land between 1 and 10 July; the employer's own designation must be delivered in writing by 31 October. For a first-year employee hired on 2 March 2026, the first employment year ends 1 March 2027, three months before that is 1 December 2026, and the later-accruing days carry a separate five-day window opening one month before, on 1 February 2027. Miss the windows and the proviso to Article 60(7) is back in play.

Fifth, the headcount itself is a calculation, not a payroll headcount. Enforcement Decree Article 7-2(1) defines the number of regularly employed employees as "the number of employees calculated by dividing the total number of employees employed for one month" before the date the question arises "by the number of working days during the same period." Paragraph (2) then adds a one-half rule in both directions: a workplace is treated as covered where the days on which the computed figure falls short of the threshold are "less than 1/2 of a period for calculation," and treated as not covered where those days are "more than 1/2 of a period for calculation." A workplace that hovers around five can therefore be inside the Act one month and outside it the next.

Where This Doesn't Apply

The largest exclusion is structural. Appendix 1 to the Enforcement Decree, published by the Ministry of Government Legislation as Ministry of Government Legislation, Enforcement Decree of the Labor Standards Act, Appendix 1 (provisions applicable to workplaces with four or fewer regularly employed workers), lists exactly three entries under Chapter 4, on working hours and rest: Article 54, Article 55(1), and Article 63. Article 60 is not among them. Neither is Article 61. Because Enforcement Decree Article 7 makes Appendix 1 the definition of what applies, the absence is the answer: at four or fewer regularly employed workers, statutory annual leave does not exist. Whatever leave such a workplace offers rests on agreement. The Ministry of Employment and Labor sets out the same structure in its reply of 16 June 2023, Ministry of Employment and Labor, Labour Standards Policy Division: whether annual leave applies at workplaces of four or fewer, citing Article 11(1) for the five-or-more rule and Article 11(2) with Enforcement Decree Article 7 for what survives below it. On leave granted anyway, the reply goes only this far: where the parties have agreed to apply provisions such as Article 60 that do not otherwise reach a workplace of four or fewer, the employer must act accordingly. It does not name the route for enforcing that agreement, and neither does this article.

The contrast with neighbouring rules is sharp. Article 55(1) is in Appendix 1, which is why the weekly paid holiday that switches on once a part-time schedule crosses fifteen hours a week survives in a four-person shop while annual leave does not. Chapter 5 also appears in Appendix 1 in part, which is why the statutory hour caps that apply to performers under eighteen are not switched off by a small headcount either. The Act does not fall away as a block; it falls away line by line, and Article 60 happens to be one of the lines that goes.

The second exclusion is inside Article 11(1) itself. The proviso removes two categories entirely regardless of headcount: a business or workplace "in which only the employer's blood relatives living together are engaged," and "servants hired for the employer's domestic works." A family-only operation with eight cohabiting relatives is outside the Act; a family operation that hires one outsider is not covered by the proviso.

The third is a limit on the fifteen-day figure that the statutory text does not spell out. In Ministry of Government Legislation, National Law Information Center: Supreme Court Decision 2021Da227100 (14 October 2021), the issue is framed as "1년 기간제 근로계약을 체결한 근로자에게 부여될 연차휴가일수(=최대 11일)" — the number of annual leave days for a worker on a one-year fixed-term contract, capped at eleven. The decision holds that Article 60(1) "은 1년 기간제 근로계약을 체결하여 1년의 근로계약기간이 만료됨과 동시에 근로계약관계가 더 이상 유지되지 아니하는 근로자에게는 적용되지 않는다": it does not apply to a worker whose employment relationship ends at the same moment the one-year contract term expires. The twenty-six-day figure in the first chart is therefore a figure for someone who is still employed on day 366. Someone who leaves at day 365 is on eleven.

Finally, one thing this article cannot tell any particular reader: whether a given workplace is above or below the line. That is a computation under Enforcement Decree Article 7-2 over a one-month window.

If You Are Actually in This Situation

The forum depends on which of the two questions is in dispute. If the question is whether the Act applies at all — the headcount — that is decided by the regional labour office of the Ministry of Employment and Labor with jurisdiction over the workplace address, on the Article 7-2 calculation, and the employer's own characterisation is not the last word.

If the question is unpaid leave allowance for days that lapsed, that is a wage claim, and it carries a deadline. Labor Standards Act Article 49 reads: "A claim for wages under this Act shall be extinguished by prescription, unless exercised within three years." A complaint filed with the regional labour office is the standard route; the Korea Legal Aid Corporation handles civil recovery for those who qualify for assistance.

If the employer is asserting that days lapsed under Article 60(7), the useful documents are the Article 61 notices themselves — the written urging and, if the employee did not respond, the employer's written designation. Their dates are checkable against the windows above. Where those notices do not exist, the proviso to Article 60(7) points the other way.

For the text itself, the Ministry of Government Legislation runs the National Law Information Center, whose article viewer carries each provision in Korean; the Korea Legislation Research Institute publishes the English translations. Where the two read differently, the Korean is the enacted text. On the 1개월 개근 point in Article 60(2), that is not a theoretical distinction.

This is a description of statutory text and one published decision, not legal or tax advice; anyone with a live dispute should take it to a labour attorney or the competent labour office.