What weekly holiday pay is and where it comes from

What weekly holiday pay is

Labor Standards Act art. 55(1) says an employer shall guarantee a worker at least one paid holiday per week on average. The word paid is the point. It is a day off, and money attaches to it. That day's money is what people call juhyu sudang, and on a payslip it appears as 주휴수당 or 유급휴일수당.

For salaried staff it is already inside the monthly salary and never shows separately. For someone paid by the hour, multiplying hours worked by the rate leaves that day out, so it has to be calculated and added on its own. That is why, for a part-timer, weekly holiday pay is a visible, separate sum.

How much is one day's contracted hours multiplied by the hourly wage. Someone on 40 hours over five days has 8 hours a day and receives 8 hours at their rate. Someone working less receives the same proportion. 20 hours a week gives 4 hours at the hourly rate.

The rules the statutes set

Two provisions decide who gets it. Labor Standards Act art. 18(3) says that arts. 55 and 60 do not apply to a worker whose contracted hours, averaged over 4 weeks (or over the period if shorter), are under 15 hours a week. So the 4-week average must be 15 hours or more. It is not judged on one week alone.

Enforcement Decree art. 30(1) says the paid holiday under art. 55(1) shall be given to a worker who attended all scheduled working days in the week. A scheduled working day is a day the contract says you work. The Ministry's counselling text defines an absence as a day on which the worker, of their own accord, did not provide work on a scheduled working day agreed between the parties. A day your employer told you to stay home is not one.

How much is set by Annex 2, which Enforcement Decree art. 9(1) points to. Item 2(b) says a part-time worker's daily contracted hours are the 4-week contracted hours divided by the full-time staff's total scheduled working days in that period, and item 2(a) says the daily ordinary wage is those hours multiplied by the hourly wage. Item 4(a) says part-time workers must also be given the art. 55 paid holiday, and item 4(d) says the pay for it is that daily ordinary wage.

The ceiling is Labor Standards Act art. 50. Paragraph 1 caps a week at 40 hours excluding breaks and paragraph 2 caps a day at 8 hours. The Ministry's counselling text says that where a workplace's hours exceed the statutory day of 8 hours, holiday pay is for 8 hours, and where they are shorter, it is for the contracted hours.

What a week and contracted hours mean is in Labor Standards Act art. 2(1). Item 7 defines a week as seven days including holidays, and item 8 defines contracted hours as the hours agreed between worker and employer within the limits of art. 50. The agreed hours, not the hours actually worked, are the base.

What this calculator does

This is what the code does, in order. It takes your hourly wage and this week's contracted hours. If you say your hours vary, it takes up to the last 4 weeks, adds only the weeks you entered and divides by that count. Someone who has not yet worked 4 weeks enters only the weeks worked, which is what the bracket in art. 18(3) means.

If that average is under 15 hours, this week's holiday pay is set to zero and the reason is shown. If it is 15 hours or more but you marked an absence, it is again zero with Enforcement Decree art. 30(1) cited. If both conditions pass, it works out the paid rest hours: the average weekly hours divided by 40 and multiplied by 8, stopping at 8 hours once the average reaches 40 hours. That is Annex 2 item 2(b) applied to a workplace whose full-time staff work five days and 40 hours, and the result screen states that assumption.

Holiday pay is the paid rest hours multiplied by the hourly wage, rounded to the nearest won. We could not find an article fixing rounding below one won, so it rounds, and the difference never exceeds one won. Pay for hours worked is this week's hours multiplied by the rate, and the week's total is the two added together.

The monthly figure uses the arithmetic in Minimum Wage Act Enforcement Decree art. 5(1). Item 2 defines the weekly base hours as contracted hours plus hours paid under Labor Standards Act art. 55(1), and item 3 defines the monthly base hours as that multiplied by the average number of weeks in a year, divided by 12. The average number of weeks is 365 ÷ 7. For 40 hours that is (40 + 8) × 365 ÷ 7 ÷ 12 = 208.57 hours, which the Ministry's press release writes as 209 hours a month. This calculator keeps two decimal places.

The second tab is a single division. The rate you were told, multiplied by weekly hours, gives the week's total. Dividing that by weekly hours plus paid rest hours gives what one hour of work is worth if the claim is true, and the rate minus that value is the rest-day share. It also shows whether that value is at or above this year's minimum wage. Under 15 hours a week there is no holiday pay to include, so the whole rate is pay for work.

Copying the result link puts the numbers you entered into the address as parameters. Nothing is stored on a server, and whoever opens the link gets the same calculation redone on their own screen.

Filling it in

Contracted hours are the weekly hours in your contract. If you worked more or less this week, still enter the contract figure. If there is no written contract and the hours were agreed verbally, enter what was agreed, minus breaks. A five-hour shift with a thirty-minute break is 4.5 hours.

Days per week are not part of the paid rest hours. 15 hours over three days and 15 hours over five days both give three hours. The divisor is the full-time staff's scheduled days, not yours, which is why this calculator does not ask.

The minimum wage button fills in the 2026 minimum wage of ₩10,320, the figure in Ministry of Employment and Labor notice No. 2025-47, confirmed from the Ministry's press release. If your rate is higher, enter your real rate.

The absence field asks only whether there was a scheduled day you did not work for your own reasons. A day your employer told you to stay home, or the shop was closed, is not an absence. How lateness and leaving early are treated can depend on workplace rules and circumstances, so this calculator does not decide that.

The claim that it is in your rate, and the minimum wage

Many part-timers are told that weekly holiday pay is already included in their hourly rate. The statement itself is not against the law. But for it to be true, the rate minus the rest-day share has to be what one hour of work is worth, and that value has to be at or above the minimum wage.

Minimum Wage Act art. 6(1) says an employer shall pay at least the minimum wage, and art. 6(3) says any part of a wage set below the minimum is void and is treated as an agreement to pay the minimum. The 2026 minimum wage is ₩10,320, and the Ministry's press release gives the monthly equivalent for a 40 hours week as ₩2,156,880 (209 hours a month). That monthly figure includes paid rest hours, which is what Minimum Wage Act Enforcement Decree art. 5(1) item 2 means.

For example, at 20 hours a week with ₩10,320 said to include holiday pay, the week's total of ₩206,400 divided by 24 hours (20 hours worked plus 4 hours of paid rest) gives ₩8,600 for one hour of work. That is below the minimum wage, so that part falls under art. 6(3). Folding holiday pay into the minimum wage for these hours gives a rate of at least ₩12,384. The second tab does exactly this division.

This calculator does not rule that your employer is wrong. It depends on whether the contract lists a base rate and holiday pay separately and on what was said to be included, and that is for whoever reads the documents to judge. What is shown here is the division and how its result relates to the minimum wage.

Where people get stuck

It is true that under 15 hours a week you do not get it. But it is a 4-week average, not one week. If this week is 18 hours and the other three were 12 hours, the average is 13.5 hours and there is none. If this week is 12 hours but the average clears 15 hours, there is. This week's amount uses this week's hours, but eligibility uses the average.

It is also true that one absence removes that week's pay. Enforcement Decree art. 30(1) grants it to a worker who attended every scheduled day. Attend every day next week and next week's pay comes back. An absence does not touch other weeks.

Working more than 40 hours does not raise the paid rest hours past 8 hours. Labor Standards Act art. 50(2) caps a day at 8 hours, and the Ministry's counselling text says that where hours exceed the statutory day, holiday pay is for 8 hours. Hours past 40 hours are an overtime question, which this calculator does not cover.

If you were paid for hours worked only and there is no holiday pay line on your payslip, first check here whether you meet the conditions and note the amount. Then ask your employer about the payslip items, and if it comes to a dispute the Ministry of Employment and Labor helpline 1350 answers for free. This calculator is not labour counselling.

If the full-time staff at your workplace work six days, the divisor in Annex 2 item 2(b) becomes 24 days over four weeks and the daily contracted hours come out smaller than shown here. This calculator assumes a five-day workplace and says so on the result screen.