외국인 근로자 급여명세서 읽는 법: 4대보험 공제와 2026년 최저임금

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Reading your payslip as a foreign worker: social insurance deductions and the 2026 minimum wage

Last checked: 20 October 2026 · compared against 8 official sources opened that day

Few people read their payslip to the end, yet for a foreign worker it is often the only document that shows whether you were paid as your contract says and whether insurance was deducted correctly. We checked the Labor Standards Act and its decree, the 2026 minimum wage notice and the 2026 rate pages of the pension and health insurance services on 20 October 2026, and set them out in the order you read a payslip.

You have a right to a payslip

Article 48(2) of the Labor Standards Act requires employers to give a written or electronic payslip every payday. Article 27-2 of the decree lists six items it must contain: details that identify you, the payday, total pay, the amount of each pay item (base pay, allowances, bonuses), the calculation method for items that depend on days or hours (including the number of overtime, night and holiday hours), and each deduction with the total. Article 43 says wages must be paid in money, directly, in full, at least monthly on a fixed date, and that deductions need a basis in law or a collective agreement. Article 17 gives you the right to a written contract showing how your pay is made up and calculated, so read the two documents side by side.

Check the first line against the 2026 minimum wage

The 2026 minimum wage is 10,320 won an hour, or 2,156,880 won a month for a 40-hour week on the basis of 209 paid hours including the weekly paid rest day. It is the same for every industry. Take your base pay, leave out variable items such as overtime premiums and bonuses, and divide by 209 hours (or by your contracted hours if you do not work 40 a week). If the result is below 10,320 won, ask your employer how it was calculated. A precise judgement depends on which allowances count toward the minimum wage, so treat this as a first warning check.

Pay items and premiums

Under Article 56, overtime and night work (22:00 to 06:00) earn at least 50% extra, holiday work 50% extra for the first eight hours and 100% extra beyond eight hours. At 10,320 won an hour, two hours of overtime should pay at least 30,960 won: 20,640 won of base pay plus 10,320 won of premium. If the payslip shows no hours, a required item is missing. Workplaces that regularly employ four people or fewer are covered by only part of the Act (decree Article 7 and Annex 1), so if your employer is very small, ask the 1350 call centre whether premiums apply.

Deductions: 2026 insurance rates

National pension is 9.5% in total, of which you pay 4.75%, calculated on your reported monthly income rounded down to the thousand won and kept between 410,000 and 6,590,000 won from July 2026 to June 2027; the rate rises by 0.5 percentage points a year until it reaches 13% in 2033. Health insurance is 7.19% of pay, of which you pay 3.595%. Long-term care is 0.9448% of pay, shared equally. Employment insurance (unemployment benefit) is 1.8%, of which you pay 0.9%. Industrial accident insurance is paid entirely by the employer.

On a monthly wage of 2,156,880 won, your share is roughly 102,410 won for pension (2,156,000 x 4.75%), about 77,540 won for health insurance, about 10,190 won for long-term care and about 19,410 won for employment insurance: around 210,000 won in total. Rounding can shift these by a few tens of won, and income tax is left out because it depends on the tax tables and your dependants.

What is different for foreign workers

For workers under the Act on Foreign Workers, such as E-9 holders, the Employment Insurance Act applies the unemployment and parental benefit chapters only after an application, so check whether you are enrolled for them. Whether you join the national pension can depend on your nationality and status; ask the pension service if you are unsure why there is or is not a deduction. If your employer deducts housing or meals, make sure the contract says so.

Words you will see

Base pay (기본급) is the fixed monthly wage for contracted hours. The ordinary wage (통상임금) is pay fixed in advance and paid regularly and uniformly for contracted work (decree Article 6); premiums and parental leave benefit are calculated from it. Weekly holiday pay (주휴수당) pays the paid rest day you earn by working all contracted days in a week, and some employers fold it into base pay. Tax-exempt items (비과세) are not subject to income tax under tax law, withholding (원천징수) means the employer deducts tax and pays it for you, and net pay (실수령액) is total pay minus total deductions. A payslip alone cannot prove the hours you worked, so photograph your rota or note your start and finish times every day.

If you did not get a payslip

Giving you a payslip is your employer's duty, so ask for it politely, in writing if possible, for example by text message, and say what you want to check, such as overtime hours and deductions. If it still does not come or keeps being wrong, take your messages and your bank deposit records to the call centre; bank records are the clearest proof of what you were actually paid.

A three-minute monthly check

Check the payday and the period covered; compare your base hourly pay with 10,320 won; check that overtime, night and holiday hours match your own records and that premiums follow Article 56; check that insurance deductions are close to the rates above; and check that any other deduction has a basis in your contract. If wages are late or wrong and talking to your employer does not help, call the Ministry of Employment and Labor on 1350 (weekdays 09:00 to 18:00, charged) with your payslips, contract and attendance records. Wage claims expire after three years under Article 49, so do not wait.