Korean annual leave (연차) rules: how paid days off accrue

Korean annual leave (연차유급휴가) is set by the Labor Standards Act, not by company goodwill, and the rules reward tenure in a specific, stepped way. Most disputes come from misunderstanding the first year — when leave accrues monthly rather than all at once — and the boundary at exactly one year of service. Here's how the days actually accumulate.

The one-year baseline: 15 days

The anchor rule: an employee who works at least 80% of the days in a one-year period earns 15 days of paid leave for the next year. That 80% threshold is what attendance has to clear; meet it, and the 15 days are granted. This is the figure most people mean by "annual leave" in Korea, and it's the baseline everything else adjusts from.

The first year accrues monthly

Before that first anniversary, a new employee doesn't wait twelve months with nothing. For each full month worked without absence, they earn 1 day of paid leave, up to 11 days over the first year. So during year one you accrue day by day, monthly.

The interaction with the 15-day grant is the part that confuses everyone. Under the current rules, those first-year monthly days and the 15-day second-year grant are treated as separate entitlements — a worker can reach roughly 26 days available across the opening stretch of employment (11 monthly + 15 on completing the first year). Employers who assume "15 days, period" under-grant; employees who don't know about the monthly accrual think they have nothing in year one. Both are wrong.

Long service adds days, capped at 25

Leave grows with tenure. After the initial period, every two additional years of continuous service adds 1 day:

• 1 year → 15 days
• 3 years → 16 days
• 5 years → 17 days
• … +1 day per 2 years …
• capped at 25 days total

So the increase is gradual and bounded — a long-tenured employee tops out at 25 days, not an ever-growing number.

The points that cause disputes

• The 80% attendance condition. Fall below 80% in the measuring year and the 15-day grant doesn't apply the normal way — a reduced, pro-rated entitlement applies instead. Legally protected absences (certain leaves) are generally counted as attendance, which changes the math.
• Accrual basis: hire date vs fiscal year. Leave is defined from the individual hire date, but many companies administer it on a company-wide fiscal year for simplicity. That's allowed if it doesn't disadvantage the employee, and reconciling the two is a common source of confusion at year boundaries.
• Expiry and the use-promotion system. Leave generally must be used within its period or it lapses, and employers can run a formal "use-promotion" (촉진) procedure that, done correctly, relieves them of paying out unused days. Done incorrectly, they still owe the compensation.
• Payout on unused leave. Leave not used (and not validly promoted away) is typically compensated in wages — a real cost employers sometimes overlook.

Why a calculator helps here

Because the entitlement depends on hire date, months worked, attendance, and tenure bracket all at once, the day count is easy to get wrong by hand — especially across the first-year boundary where monthly accrual and the 15-day grant overlap. Our annual leave calculator takes a hire date and works out the accrued days under these rules in the browser.

This is one piece of the Korean employment picture; for what actually reaches your account after deductions, the Korean net salary breakdown covers the four insurances and income tax. Note that labor rules are updated periodically and individual cases vary — treat any calculation as a planning estimate, not legal advice.