From January 1, 2027, the legal minimum wage in South Korea is 10,700 won per hour — 2,236,300 won a month at a standard 40-hour week. It applies to everyone the law covers, from a 45-year-old factory worker to a 17-year-old working weekends at a convenience store, at exactly the same rate.
Korea’s minimum wage is one of the most reliably annual rituals in the country’s public life. Every July, a committee of 27 people sits in a government building in Sejong, argues for months, and produces one number that then applies to millions of people for the following calendar year.
What the minimum wage actually is
Korea’s minimum wage (최저임금, choejeo-imgeum) is a statutory floor set by the Minimum Wage Act (최저임금법), not a collective agreement and not an average. Its stated purpose in Article 1 of the Act is to guarantee a minimum level of wages for the stability of workers’ livelihoods and the improvement of the quality of the labor force — and it is binding on employers, who cannot pay below it even if a worker agrees to.
Three things are worth being precise about:
- The hourly rate is the legal standard. Daily and monthly amounts are conversions: a daily figure assumes 8 hours, and the standard monthly figure for a 40-hour week is calculated over 209 hours — 174 working hours plus about 35 hours of paid weekly holiday time (주휴수당, Korea’s paid weekly rest allowance). That 209-hour basis is why Korea’s monthly minimum looks larger than simply “hourly × 160”.
- A monthly salary can legally sit at the minimum and still be lawful — the test is whether the hourly rate, after the wage components the law counts, reaches the floor.
- It is a floor, not a target. Korean law explicitly forbids an employer from lowering an existing wage because of the minimum wage.
Who is covered
The Minimum Wage Act applies to all businesses and workplaces that employ workers, regardless of size. There are exactly two carve-outs in Article 3: businesses that employ only cohabiting relatives, and domestic workers (housekeepers and the like).
That breadth matters. Part-time workers, temporary and daily workers, foreign nationals working legally in Korea, and students with part-time jobs are all covered. An employer cannot point to a worker’s age, nationality, or short hours to pay less per hour.
The teenager earns the same as the adult
This is the part that surprises people most often, so it is worth stating plainly: Korea has no youth minimum wage. There is no lower rate for students, no age band, no training rate for people under 18.
A 17-year-old stacking shelves at 11 p.m. at a GS25 is legally entitled to the same hourly minimum as a 50-year-old doing the same job. Korea’s own public legal information service puts it bluntly: an employer must pay a working youth at or above the minimum wage, and paying a young worker below it — or cutting their existing wage because the minimum went up — carries the same criminal penalty as doing it to an adult: up to 3 years in prison or a fine of up to 20 million won, and in some cases both.
This is not universal. Several countries do carve out a lower youth rate. Korea does not, and the reason is structural rather than sentimental: the minimum wage here is set as one national rate with no industry or age differentiation. Once the rate is uniform, it is uniform for everybody.
There is one narrow exception, and it has nothing to do with being young:
The 3-month probation reduction. Under Article 3 of the Enforcement Decree of the Minimum Wage Act, an employer may pay 90% of the minimum wage to a worker who (a) has signed a contract for one year or longer, (b) is within the first 3 months of a probation period defined in the contract or workplace rules, and (c) is not in a simple-labor (단순노무) role. Anyone who fails any of those three conditions — including most part-time students on short contracts, and anyone doing simple manual work — is entitled to the full 100%.
So the correct statement is not “teenagers get less”. It is: the only wage reduction Korea’s law allows is a time-limited, contract-based probation rate that has nothing to do with age — and it is routinely misapplied by employers who think “수습” (probation) is a magic word.
Young workers do get other protections adults don’t: 15- to 18-year-olds cannot be made to work more than 7 hours a day and 35 hours a week as a baseline (extendable by agreement to 8 and 40), overtime is capped at 1 hour a day and 5 hours a week, night and holiday work is restricted, and a written employment contract with proof of age is required.
How one number gets decided each year
The process is fixed by law and runs on a calendar:
By March 31 : The Minister of Employment and Labor formally requests the Minimum Wage Council to deliberate the next year’s rate.
Spring–July: The Minimum Wage Council (최저임금위원회) — 27 members, split evenly between worker representatives, employer representatives, and public-interest members — negotiates. Unions typically open high, employers open low, and the public-interest members try to broker a compromise.
Mid-July: The Council votes. If labor and management cannot agree, the decision goes to a recorded vote — which is what happened for 2027.
By August 5: The Minister decides and publicly gazettes the rate.
January 1: The new rate takes effect, and runs through December 31.
Two structural details are easy to miss. First, the rate applies from January 1 only since 2007 — before that, Korea’s minimum wage took effect in September, which is why the historical table below shows periods like “2004.9.1–2005.8.31”. Second, the very earliest years used two separate groups rather than one national number, which is why 1988 and 1989 show two figures in the table below.
Every minimum wage since 1988
Korea’s minimum wage system began in 1988. This is the complete official record — hourly rate, the increase in won, and the increase in percent.
| Applied from | Hourly (won) | Increase (won) | Increase (%) |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2027.1.1 | 10,700 | 380 | 3.7 |
| 2026.1.1 | 10,320 | 290 | 2.9 |
| 2025.1.1 | 10,030 | 170 | 1.7 |
| 2024.1.1 | 9,860 | 240 | 2.5 |
| 2023.1.1 | 9,620 | 460 | 5.0 |
| 2022.1.1 | 9,160 | 440 | 5.05 |
| 2021.1.1 | 8,720 | 130 | 1.5 |
| 2020.1.1 | 8,590 | 240 | 2.87 |
| 2019.1.1 | 8,350 | 820 | 10.9 |
| 2018.1.1 | 7,530 | 1,060 | 16.4 |
| 2017.1.1 | 6,470 | 440 | 7.3 |
| 2016.1.1 | 6,030 | 450 | 8.1 |
| 2015.1.1 | 5,580 | 370 | 7.1 |
| 2014.1.1 | 5,210 | 350 | 7.2 |
| 2013.1.1 | 4,860 | 280 | 6.1 |
| 2012.1.1 | 4,580 | 260 | 6.0 |
| 2011.1.1 | 4,320 | 210 | 5.1 |
| 2010.1.1 | 4,110 | 110 | 2.75 |
| 2009.1.1 | 4,000 | 230 | 6.1 |
| 2008.1.1 | 3,770 | 290 | 8.3 |
| 2007.1.1 | 3,480 | 380 | 12.3 |
| 2005.9.1 | 3,100 | 260 | 9.2 |
| 2004.9.1 | 2,840 | 330 | 13.1 |
| 2003.9.1 | 2,510 | 235 | 10.3 |
| 2002.9.1 | 2,275 | 175 | 8.3 |
| 2001.9.1 | 2,100 | 235 | 12.6 |
| 2000.9.1 | 1,865 | 265 | 16.6 |
| 1999.9.1 | 1,600 | 75 | 4.9 |
| 1998.9.1 | 1,525 | 40 | 2.7 |
| 1997.9.1 | 1,485 | 85 | 6.1 |
| 1996.9.1 | 1,400 | 125 | 9.8 |
| 1995.9.1 | 1,275 | 105 | 8.97 |
| 1994.9.1 | 1,170 | 85 | 7.8 |
| 1994.1.1 | 1,085 | 80 | 7.96 |
| 1993.1.1 | 1,005 | 80 | 8.6 |
| 1992.1.1 | 925 | 105 | 12.8 |
| 1991.1.1 | 820 | 130 | 18.8 |
| 1990.1.1 | 690 | 90 | 15.0 |
| 1989.1.1 | 600 | 137.5 / 112.5 | 29.7 / 23.1 |
| 1988.1.1 | 462.5 / 487.5 | — | — |
Source: Minimum Wage Council, year-by-year decisions. https://www.minimumwage.go.kr/minWage/policy/decisionMain.do
Two patterns jump out. First, the increases have been wildly uneven. The single largest jump on record is 2018, at 16.4% — part of a deliberate policy push to lift the floor quickly toward 10,000 won. Then the brakes went on: 2021 was 1.5%, and the last three years have been under 3%. Second, the arithmetic of small percentages grows. A 1.7% raise in 2025 sounds like nothing, but on a base of 10,030 won it is still 170 won an hour — roughly 355,000 won a month on a full-time schedule.
What happens if an employer ignores it
Paying below the minimum wage is a criminal offense, not a paperwork problem: up to 3 years in prison or a fine of up to 20 million won, with both possible in serious cases. Employers must also post the current rate, the date it takes effect, and which wage components are excluded from the minimum-wage calculation where workers can easily see it; failure to post is itself subject to an administrative fine.
Workers who are underpaid can file a complaint with the local Labor Office (고용노동부 지방관서), or call the ministry’s 1350 hotline. Back pay can be claimed for up to three years.
Korea also publishes a non-compliance rate (미만율) — the share of wage workers estimated to earn below the minimum. In 2025 it was 4.1% (about 728,000 workers), down from 5.1% in 2018, though the ministry cautions that this is an estimate from general surveys, not a count of actual violations.
How Koreans check their own pay: Naver’s wage calculators
If you want to know what the minimum wage means in practice, Koreans usually reach for the same tool: Naver, the country’s dominant portal.
Type a keyword like 임금계산기 (“wage calculator”) into Naver — desktop or the Naver app — and a calculator appears directly inside the search results, no separate site to visit. Enter your hourly rate or your monthly salary and your weekly working hours, and it converts between hourly, daily, weekly, monthly, and annual pay. The tool is built on the current legal minimum (it shows 2026’s 10,320 won until the 2027 rate takes effect on January 1) and it factors in Korea’s weekly holiday hours — it tells you outright that an 8-hour, 5-day week counts as 48 hours once the 8 paid weekly holiday hours are included. It also links through to the Ministry of Employment and Labor’s severance-pay calculator.
Naver — Wage calculator (임금계산기), displayed directly in search results: https://search.naver.com/search.naver?query=임금계산기
There is an official counterpart, too: the Ministry’s own minimum wage simulation calculator (최저임금 모의계산기) on moel.go.kr, which walks you through working hours and pay period step by step.
Ministry of Employment and Labor — Minimum wage simulation calculator: https://www.moel.go.kr/miniWageMain.do
From gross to take-home: the two calculators do different jobs
This distinction trips people up, so it is worth being clear. The 임금계산기 does not subtract anything. It converts between hourly, daily, weekly, monthly and annual figures and stops there — the amount it shows is gross pay, before any deduction. Naver’s own note on the tool says as much: allowances and overtime are not included, and the weekly-holiday element varies by company, so the figure will differ from your actual pay.
If you want the money that actually reaches your bank account, search 연봉 실수령액 계산기 (annual salary take-home calculator). That is a separate widget, and it is the one that subtracts. It asks for your annual salary, a non-taxable allowance (비과세액 — commonly 2.4 million won a year for meal and transport allowances), the number of dependents including yourself, and the number of children under 20. This is also why it states outright that a 5-day week works out to 209 hours a month.
The deductions it applies are:
- 국민연금 — National Pension
- 건강보험 — National Health Insurance, plus 장기요양보험 (long-term care insurance)
- 고용보험 — Employment Insurance
- 소득세 and 지방소득세 — national and local income tax, taken from the National Tax Service’s simplified wage tax table
One detail that confuses newcomers: the “four major insurances” (4대보험) include 산재보험 (industrial accident insurance), but that one is paid entirely by the employer — it never appears on a worker’s payslip. That is why the itemized deduction list has three insurance lines, not four.
Naver is explicit about the limit, and it is worth repeating: the insurance figures are the employee’s share and the income tax is based on the National Tax Service’s simplified table, so the result approximates rather than reproduces your real take-home pay. Your year-end tax settlement (연말정산), your company’s allowance structure, and any non-taxable benefits will move the final number.
This article reflects the rate gazetted for 2027 and the official record through the 2026 decision. Rates are set annually — if you are reading this later, check the current figure on the Minimum Wage Council’s site before relying on it.
