EVERYDAY LAB · 일상연구소
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Calculators
Enter numbers, get answersYour most-used tools move to the front
Take-home Pay
2026 rates
Frequent
Severance Pay
Just enter your dates
Frequent
Hourly Wage
Incl. holiday pay & tax
Frequent
Electricity Bill
Progressive tiers
Frequent
Unemployment Pay
Amount & duration
Frequent
National Pension
Estimate & claim timing
Frequent
BMI & BMR
Daily calorie needs
Frequent
Jeonse ↔ Rent
Fair rent & legal cap
Frequent
Loan Payments
Monthly & total interest
Frequent
Income Tax
Freelancer 3.3% refund
Frequent
Live data
as of the moment you open itAir quality, apartment sale prices, the base exchange rate and farm produce prices — six feeds in all, from Korean government sources. Five are read as you open the page; produce prices are fetched twice a day and stored.
Air quality where you are
Comprehensive Air-quality Index
hourly
Apartment sale prices
Filed price, complex by complex
as filings arrive
Base exchange rate
Posted that morning
once a business day
Jeonse loan rates
By bank · that week
weekly
Seoul policy-loan rates
By bank · last three months
irregular
Farm produce prices
One survey date · vs the normal-year price
twice a day
Money
What Unused Annual Leave Is Worth in Korea — Ordinary Wage and the 209 Hours
"Unused leave gets paid out" is half true. The statute's default is that it lapses and payment is the exception — and the number you divide by, 209, appears in no statute at all.
Real Estate
Korean Gift With Assumed Debt — Between Family, the Default Runs the Other Way
The Act subtracts assumed debt, and the Decree names the rental deposit as one. One paragraph later it presumes that between spouses and lineal relatives the debt was never assumed.
Retirement
Korean Retirement Pension Early Withdrawal — Enough to Pledge, Not Enough to Withdraw
The grounds are a closed list in the Enforcement Decree. But the pledge list and the withdrawal list differ, and university fees, weddings and funerals appear only on the first.
Health
View all 40 →
Chuseok Safety — 1,474 Bee Stings, and 12,038 Road Injuries in the Same TablesKorean holiday notices lead with bees and snakes. The same fire service tables carry a number eight times larger — and because the holiday runs 4 to 6 days, the yearly totals do not compare.
Aug 11 · 9 min read
Korea's National Health Screening — There Is No “Odd or Even Birth Year” in the LawThe decree fixes an interval of once every two years, nothing more. Birth-year parity is how that two-year cycle is run, not a legal requirement.
Aug 10 · 11 min read
What Korea's Fine Dust “Bad” Actually Means — Two Different RulersThe top of the PM2.5 “Moderate” band, 35 micrograms, is the legal 24-hour standard itself. “Moderate” is not safe; it means today's limit has not been passed yet.
Aug 7 · 9 min read
Exercise
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5 Glute-Strengthening Moves — Protect Your Back and KneesSitting switches the glutes off and the lower back takes over. Test whether they fire, then climb five stages.
Jul 30 · 9 min read
5 Moves to Fix a Hunched Back & Rounded ShouldersPosture reverts not because the moves are hard, but because the other hours vastly outnumber your ten minutes.
Jul 30 · 9 min read
5 Lower-Body Strength Moves — Metabolism, Knees, BalanceHalf your muscle sits below the waist. Test the sit-to-stand, then climb five stages from knee direction to single leg.
Jul 30 · 9 min read
Taxes
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Korea's 2026 Tax Reform Bill — From Holding to Living There, and It Is Still a BillAlmost every write-up says “here is what changes from 2027.” But this goes to the National Assembly on 3 September. One axis runs through all of it — not how long you held the home, but how long you lived in it.
Aug 6 · 12 min read
Korean Inheritance Tax — Facts, Not Headlines (2026)“A 20% financial-asset deduction” only holds between ₩100M and ₩1B — the provision actually has four bands.
Aug 4 · 12 min read
Korea's Gift Tax Deductions — Marriage and Childbirth Together Are Still 100m WonParagraphs (1) and (2) each say "separately, 100m won," which reads as 200m. Paragraph (3) then caps the sum at 100m.
Aug 3 · 9 min read
Money
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Leaving After Exactly One Year in Korea — When One Day Decides FifteenYou counted on "a year worked, so fifteen days" and eleven arrived. It is not an error: finish exactly one year and the fifteen days never come into existence.
Aug 21 · 8 min read
Korea's 20m Won Financial Income Threshold — Crossing It Can Cost NothingTwenty million is not the line where the rate changes but where the method does. The statute runs two calculations and keeps the larger — and with no other income the withholding side wins up to 77.61m won.
Aug 12 · 10 min read
Seoul's Policy Loans Cost 2.65% After the Subsidy — and the Subsidy Is Where Banks DifferA policy loan brochure quotes two rates: what the bank charges and what the city pays. The borrower carries the gap, which nothing publishes.
Aug 11 · 10 min read
Real Estate
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Only One Renewal in Three Used Korea's Statutory Renewal Right — We Counted 7,719 FilingsThe statute cannot tell you how often the right is used. The rental filing data can, because it carries the answer as a field.
Aug 11 · 11 min read
Jeonse Loan Rates Differ by 1.99 Points Between Banks — With the Same Guarantee Behind ThemThe lowest was 3.79% and the highest 5.78%. On a KRW 100 million loan that is KRW 1.99 million a year.
Aug 11 · 9 min read
Five Places People Get Korea's DSR Wrong — All of Them in FiguresCounting interest only gets you a quarter of the way, the heavy thing is the term rather than the balance, and the LTV limit is not your limit.
Aug 11 · 10 min read
Retirement
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What Health Insurance Costs After You Retire — and Three Deadlines You Can't UndoVoluntary continuation is exactly double what you paid while employed (325,392 won a month on a 4m salary). The comparison that counts is against regional enrolment.
Aug 4 · 16 min read
Divided and Survivor Pensions — What Happens After Divorce or LossThe divided pension's five years do not start at divorce — the provision says “from the time all the requirements are satisfied.”
Jul 31 · 12 min read
401(k) vs Roth IRA — 2026 Limits and Income Bands, Read Off the IRS PagesWe opened five IRS pages to pin down the 2026 numbers — and found two of them contradicting each other.
Jul 31 · 9 min read
Life Tips
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Cancelling a Chuseok Train Ticket — Free on a Weekday, 20% Over the HolidayKORAIL's penalty table has two rows. Monday to Thursday is free until three hours before departure; Friday to Sunday and holidays carry a minimum penalty even a month out. On a 100,000 won fare that is 5,000 against 20,000.
Aug 12 · 10 min read
Chuseok Groceries — We Counted 74 Items, and 54 of Them FellThe median retail item is down 7.2% on a year ago. Yet Singo pear is +24.9% and Tsugaru apple is −29.1% — 54 points apart inside the same category. It is not an average, it is a split.
Aug 12 · 10 min read
Chuseok Expressway Toll Exemption — Four Holiday Days, Three Toll-FreeBehind the one-line claim that tolls are waived again sit three separate conditions. One of them leaves the last day of the holiday out.
Aug 11 · 8 min read
How we write
We publish only what we've actually calculated and checked. Four rules decide what makes it in.
1
Agency documents
Figures come from the institution's own publication, with the link alongside.
2
Dated to a year
Every article says which year its figures apply to.
3
Our arithmetic, marked
Anything we worked out ourselves is labelled as ours.
4
What we could not verify
It stays in — with where you can check it yourself.