Weekly Holiday Allowance
Weekly paid-holiday allowance for 15h+ workers.
Statutory formulaBased on 2026 rulesSources: Labor Standards Act · Ministry of Employment & Labor
Left blank, the 2026 minimum wage applies.
Hours beyond 40/week are capped for this calculation.
Estimated weekly holiday allowance
82,560원
Paid when working 15 or more hours a week with full attendance.
What is the weekly holiday allowance?
Under Korea's Labor Standards Act, an employer must grant at least one paid weekly holiday to a worker who has worked the full contracted days in a week. The weekly holiday allowance (juhyu-sudang) is one day's wage paid for that holiday even though no work is performed. Part-time and hourly workers qualify on the same terms as full-time staff.
How it is calculated
Converted hours = min(weekly hours, 40) ÷ 40 × 8Allowance = converted hours × hourly wage
For example, at KRW 10,320/hour and 20 hours a week, the converted hours are 20 ÷ 40 × 8 = 4, so the allowance is 4 × 10,320 = KRW 41,280.
Conditions
- 15+ hours per week — below 15 contracted hours, no allowance accrues.
- Full attendance — all contracted days that week must be worked; lateness is not counted as absence.
When weekly holiday pay is owed
Weekly holiday pay is not a simple proportion of hours worked. Two conditions must both be met: contracted hours and full attendance.
The 15-hour threshold
Averaged over four weeks, contracted hours below 15 a week mean no weekly holiday pay — and no annual leave or severance either.
The test is contracted hours, not hours actually worked: a 14-hour contract stretched to 18 hours by overtime does not in principle qualify, though a sustained pattern may be judged on substance.
Because it is a four-week average, a single short week does not disqualify. Irregular schedules need the average worked out properly.
What full attendance means
Attendance on every scheduled working day in the week is required; a single absence forfeits that week's payment. Lateness and early departure are not absences.
Days of approved annual leave count as attendance, and treating them as absence to withhold the payment is unlawful. The same applies to shutdowns caused by the employer.
Working on the weekly rest day earns pay for that work in addition to the weekly holiday pay, plus a holiday premium at workplaces with five or more employees.
If it is not paid
Weekly holiday pay is wages, so withholding it is unpaid wages — a separate issue from the minimum wage, and a breach even where the hourly rate is above the floor.
Complaints can be filed with a regional labour office or online. An employment contract, payslips and attendance records speed things up; not having been given a contract is itself a breach.
Claims survive for three years and outlast resignation, though records get harder to obtain over time.
Legal basis
- Weekly rest day — Labor Standards Act art. 55
- Exclusion of very short-time workers — art. 18(3)
- Holiday work premium — art. 56(2)
- Limitation on wage claims — art. 49