Korea Salary Take-Home Pay Calculator

In Korea, take-home pay is quite different from the salary written in an employment contract. Every employee's paycheck is reduced by four mandatory social insurance programs plus withheld income tax, and the gap between gross and net pay grows as income rises. This calculator estimates that gap using rates and thresholds confirmed against Korea's National Pension Service, National Health Insurance Service, and National Tax Service as of August 2026.

How the four insurance programs are deducted

The four insurance programs work differently from each other. National Pension takes 4.75% of the employee's monthly compensation base, but only up to a ceiling, currently 6,590,000 KRW, effective July 2026 through June 2027 and revised every July. Health Insurance takes 3.595%, and no confirmed ceiling for 2026 could be found for this calculator, so none is applied. On top of that, Long-Term Care Insurance takes 13.14%, and not of income directly but of the health insurance premium itself already calculated, a detail that trips up many people. Employment Insurance takes 0.9%, also without a confirmed ceiling here.

How income tax is calculated

Income tax is the hardest part to reproduce accurately. Korea's National Tax Service does not publish a simple formula for its official "simplified withholding tax table". That table is itself the output of a full annual tax calculation compressed into a monthly lookup. Reaching the taxable base takes several deduction steps: the earned income deduction, the personal deduction, then the full National Pension premium already calculated above (the "pension premium deduction") and the full Health, Long-Term Care, and Employment Insurance premiums already calculated above (the "special income deduction"), both confirmed against the Income Tax Act (Articles 51-3 and 52). Only after all of that is the progressive tax rate applied, followed by the earned income tax credit. This calculator rebuilds that full chain from the pieces the NTS publishes separately, rather than using the lookup table itself, so the result is a close approximation rather than the table's exact figure. Local income tax, meanwhile, is simply a flat 10% surcharge on whatever income tax gets withheld.

What is left untaxed

One non-taxable item is handled specially: up to 200,000 KRW per month in meal allowance is excluded from both the insurance base and the taxable income under 2026 rules. Any amount entered above that limit is automatically treated as ordinary taxable pay, so there is no need to track the limit yourself.

Limits of this calculator

A few limitations are worth keeping in mind. Only the basic personal deduction (1,500,000 KRW per dependent, including the taxpayer) is applied. Additional deductions for elderly or disabled dependents, the child tax credit, and itemized deductions for insurance, medical, or education expenses are not included, because this calculator only implements figures it could verify against an official source rather than guessing. Health and Employment Insurance ceilings could not be confirmed for 2026 and are therefore not applied, which can overstate those two lines for very high earners. Finally, your final tax liability is only settled during year-end tax settlement the following February, so this tool reflects monthly withholding only, not that final reconciliation.

Foreign employees and the February settlement

Foreign employees have a choice that Korean nationals do not. Alongside the ordinary progressive calculation this tool models, the National Tax Service allows a foreign worker to elect separate taxation of wage and salary income at a flat 19%, and its published guidance is explicit that choosing it switches off the exemptions, deductions, reductions and tax credits the progressive route depends on. Local income tax still applies on top at 10% of the tax figure. Whether the flat option wins therefore depends almost entirely on how large your deductions would otherwise have been, which is why it is usually decided at the year-end settlement rather than when the contract is signed.

Korea also settles income tax through an employer-run process rather than a personal filing for most employees. Every February your employer recalculates the previous calendar year using the deductions and credits you document, compares that against everything withheld month by month, and refunds or collects the difference in that month of pay. Much of the evidence comes from the tax office consolidated data service, so the work is closer to confirming records than to gathering receipts. That is exactly why the monthly figure here is deliberately conservative: it applies only what applies automatically, and the items you claim in February are what make the February paycheck look unusual.

Treat the monthly result as the baseline your payslip should sit close to, then look for the three things that legitimately move it. A meal allowance above the non-taxable limit pushes money into the taxable base, a dependent added or removed changes the personal deduction, and every July the pension ceiling is reset, which quietly changes the pension line for high earners whose salary has not moved at all. If none of those explain the gap, the cause is usually a deduction or credit your employer already applies that this calculator does not model.