“Unused leave gets paid out” is half true. Turning into money takes one condition, and how much it is turns on ordinary wage rather than salary. The number you divide by is 209 — which appears in no statute at all.
1. When it becomes money. Leave lapses if not taken within a year (art. 60(7)). Pay survives only under the proviso — “where the worker was unable to use it for reasons attributable to the employer”. Complete the written procedure in article 61 and the answer is zero.
2. How much. One day of ordinary wage × days unused, where a day is monthly ordinary wage ÷ 209 × 8 hours. At KRW 3,000,000 that is KRW 114,833.
3. The common error. Entering gross pay. Someone on KRW 3.5m gross whose ordinary wage is KRW 3.0m and who uses the gross figure overstates a day by 16.7% (our own calculation).
Leaving it unused does not automatically make it money
Read the order of the sentence and it inverts the usual assumption. Article 60(7) begins with the rule — “leave shall lapse if not exercised within one year” — and only then adds “provided that this shall not apply where the worker was unable to use it for reasons attributable to the employer”. The default is that it disappears; payment is the exception.
The procedure that closes off that exception is the leave promotion in article 61: the employer must give written notice within 10 days of the point six months before lapse, and if the worker does not respond within 10 days, the employer must fix the dates and notify in writing by two months before lapse. Complete all of it and unused leave lapses with nothing payable. The steps and deadlines are set out with the rule text in the annual leave explainer.
So there are two things to check. 1. Did a written notice arrive that year? Verbal word or a general announcement is not what the article requires. 2. Was the first notice given “to each worker individually”, as the text says? Miss either and it stays “attributable to the employer” — and it is payable.
Ordinary wage, not salary
The unit price is ordinary wage. Article 6 of the Enforcement Decree defines it as “wages agreed to be paid regularly and uniformly for contracted or total work”. Three words carry the test — regularly, uniformly, agreed to be paid.
Items that rise and fall with results, like performance pay, are in principle outside it because they are not agreed in advance. But whether a given allowance counts turns on how it is actually paid, not what it is called, and that varies with employment rules and practice. This article will not label individual items in or out — that judgement needs your payslip.
The size of the difference is easier to see as a number. Take someone on KRW 3.5m gross of which KRW 3.0m is ordinary wage.
| What was entered | One day | 10 days unused |
|---|---|---|
| Gross pay, KRW 3.5m (wrong) | 133,971 | 1,339,713 |
| Ordinary wage, KRW 3.0m | 114,833 | 1,148,325 |
| Difference | +19,139 | +191,388 (16.7%) |
The hourly figures are 16,746 and 14,354 — each divided by 209. A day is that times eight.
※ The “difference” row is computed before rounding — subtract the printed 114,833 from the printed 133,971 and you get 19,138. Each cell is rounded to the won. The ten-day figure comes out the same either way.
※ The 3.5m and 3.0m are our own illustration. How far gross and ordinary wage diverge differs from person to person — what to take from this table is the direction, not the amounts.
209 is not hours worked
Converting a monthly wage to an hourly one means dividing by monthly contracted hours, and in a 40-hour workplace that figure is 209. Built up:
| Step | Calculation | Result |
|---|---|---|
| Paid hours per week | 40 contracted + 8 weekly holiday | 48 hours |
| Weeks per year | 365 ÷ 7 | 52.142857 |
| Monthly average | 48 × 52.142857 ÷ 12 | 208.571 hours |
| Rounded | — | 209 hours |
The eight hours of weekly holiday inside it are the point. Of the 209, 173.81 hours are actually worked and 34.76 are paid weekly holiday (our calculation). So 209 does not mean “209 hours of work a month” but “209 hours treated as paid”.
Anywhere off a 40-hour week the number changes. On a 35-hour week it is (35 + 7) × 52.142857 ÷ 12 = 182.5 hours (our calculation). Which is why the annual leave calculator leaves 209 as an editable field rather than hard-coding it.
Fifteen hours a week is the threshold under all of this
Everything above assumes leave arises at all. Article 18(3) sets a threshold: “articles 55 and 60 shall not apply to a worker whose contracted hours, averaged over four weeks (or the period worked, if shorter), come to less than 15 hours a week.” Article 55 is the weekly holiday; article 60 is annual leave.
Above 15 hours the leave exists and is set in proportion to the hours (article 18(1) — “according to a ratio calculated against the hours of a comparable full-time worker at that workplace”). The actual formula is handed by article 18(2) to Presidential Decree, and Decree article 9(1) hands it on again to Appendix 2.
The proportion arrives in hours
Appendices do not appear on the article pages, which left this spot blank twice. We opened it this time. Appendix 2 is titled “criteria for determining the working conditions of part-time workers”, and annual leave sits in item 4, holidays and leave, sub-item (b).
Labour Standards Act Enforcement Decree, Appendix 2, item 4(b)
An employer shall give a part-time worker the annual paid leave provided by article 60 of the Act. In that case the paid leave shall be in units of hours calculated as follows, and anything under an hour counts as an hour:
the comparable full-time worker’s leave days × (the part-time worker’s contracted hours ÷ the full-time worker’s) × 8 hours
The thing to notice is that the answer is a number of hours, not a number of days — and that fractions round up.
So how many days is that
Appendix 2 also defines how long your own day is — item 2(b) puts it as “the contracted hours over four weeks divided by the comparable full-time worker’s total working days in that period”. On a five-day comparable that is 20 days in four weeks, so a 20-hour week gives 80 ÷ 20 = 4 hours a day.
| Contracted week | Leave in hours | My working day | In my own days |
|---|---|---|---|
| 15 hours | 45 hours | 3.0 hours | 15 days |
| 20 hours | 60 hours | 4.0 hours | 15 days |
| 25 hours | 75 hours | 5.0 hours | 15 days |
| 30 hours | 90 hours | 6.0 hours | 15 days |
| 40 hours | 120 hours | 8.0 hours | 15 days |
Every row comes to 15 days. Not a coincidence — work the algebra and your own hours cancel, leaving only the full-time worker’s leave days, their working days in four weeks and their weekly hours. On a 40-hour, five-day comparable that lands exactly on the full-timer’s leave.
So “part-timers get less leave” is only half right. What shrinks is the hours; measured in your own working days it is the same number of days. What does shrink with them is the money: item 4(e) pays that leave at the hourly rate, so a four-hour day earns half of an eight-hour one.
Where the comparable worker is not on 40 hours over five days, the neatness breaks — the “8 hours” in the formula is fixed. Against a 44-hour comparable, a 20-hour week gets 55 hours, which over a four-hour day is 13.75 days. Start from the contracted hours in your own contract.
Settled in service, settled on leaving
The two are not the same.
| Situation | When it is settled | What is covered |
|---|---|---|
| While employed | after the leave lapses — usually the first payroll of the following year | days that lapsed unused that year (where no promotion procedure ran) |
| On leaving | within 14 days of the last day (Employee Retirement Benefit Security Act, art. 9) | all days not yet taken — even before the lapse date arrives |
The leaving settlement is the wider one. While employed, the “lapses within one year” clock is running; once you leave, the chance to take the leave is gone, so what remains becomes payable. It is settled alongside severance, so the severance calculator gives the fuller picture.
One case runs differently: leaving after exactly one year, where the 15 days never arise at all. That is covered separately in the one-year resignation article.
Promotion runs on two separate tracks
The three steps set out earlier are article 61(1), and that provision opens with a bracket: “excluding the leave under article 60(2) of a worker with less than one year of continuous service.” So the eleven days accruing in a first year are not governed by those deadlines. They fall under article 61(2), on entirely different dates.
The right-hand track carries one more proviso. Leave arising after the first notice (the days earned in months eleven and twelve) must be prompted again within 5 days of the point one month before the first year ends, and the employer’s notice is then due ten days before. Two rounds of notice in a single year.
So before asking “did a written notice arrive?”, establish which track applies. Measuring a first-year entitlement against the left-hand dates gives the wrong answer. To turn the dates into a calendar, use the promotion deadline calculator.
If you were not paid
Unused-leave pay is wages, so the three-year limitation on wage claims applies (art. 49). If fewer than three years have passed since your last day, you can still claim. Where an employer will not pay, a complaint goes to your regional labor office, and advice is available from the labor helpline (1350).
Having three documents ready makes the conversation much shorter — 1. the employment contract (start date and contracted hours), 2. a recent payslip (the ordinary wage items), 3. your leave usage record. With those three, everything above can be reproduced.
Questions that remain
Can I just skip the leave and ask for the money?
There is no such right in the text. Article 60 says leave “shall be granted”, not “may be commuted to pay”. Payment is what happens when leave survives under the proviso to article 60(7) instead of lapsing — and running the promotion procedure closes even that. Taking the leave is the rule; pay is the clean-up when you could not.
Isn't dividing by 209 unfair when I only work 174 hours?
A bigger divisor does give a smaller hourly rate — dividing by 173.81 raises it 20.2% (our calculation). But the numerator, your monthly ordinary wage, already includes weekly holiday pay. Dividing a figure that contains the holiday by hours that exclude it counts the same holiday twice. Using 209 keeps numerator and denominator on the same footing.
Does a bonus count as ordinary wage?
This article will not assert either way. The Enforcement Decree's test is regular, uniform, agreed to be paid, and payments carrying the same label “bonus” are structured differently from employer to employer, so the answer differs. Take the payslip to the labor helpline (1350) and they will assess it item by item. How it is paid, not what it is called, is the test.
Does a 20-hour-a-week part-timer get leave pay?
Yes. Twenty hours clears the 15-hour threshold, so article 60 applies (article 18(3), read the other way), and the terms are set according to a ratio against a comparable full-time worker’s hours (article 18(1)). The actual formula sits in Appendix 2, item 4(b) — it is quoted and worked through above under “The proportion arrives in hours”. A 20-hour week gives 60 hours, which over a four-hour day is 15 days. The 15-hour line also decides weekly holiday pay and social insurance — see the part-time pay calculator.
My employer says “we don't do leave payouts here”.
Half right. Getting everyone to use their leave does prevent any payout, and so does completing the article 61 procedure. But “this company does not pay it” is not a rule that can exist — while the proviso to article 60(7) is in the statute, leave the worker could not use because of the employer remains payable. Start by checking whether a written notice arrived that year. If none did, that is the answer.
Sources
- Labor Standards Act, article 60(7) — “shall lapse if not exercised within one year, provided that this shall not apply where the worker was unable to use it for reasons attributable to the employer”. That proviso is the basis for any payment. Read from two separate sources and matched.
- Labor Standards Act, article 61(1) — promotion for the year-or-more entitlement (written notice within 10 days of six months before lapse → worker replies within 10 days → employer fixes dates in writing by two months before lapse). It opens by excluding, in brackets, the article 60(2) leave of anyone under a year. The text states expressly that a complying employer has no obligation to compensate.
- Article 61(2) (inserted 31 March 2020) — promotion for the under-a-year entitlement: notice within 10 days of three months before the first year ends, within 5 days of one month before for leave arising after that notice, and the employer’s written notice by one month before (or ten days before for the later leave).
- Labor Standards Act, article 18 — (1) a part-timer’s terms are set by ratio against a comparable full-time worker’s hours, (2) the basis is left to Presidential Decree, (3) articles 55 and 60 do not apply below 15 hours a week averaged over four weeks. The formula runs Decree article 9(1) → Appendix 2.
- Enforcement Decree of the Labor Standards Act, article 6 — the definition of ordinary wage.
- Labor Standards Act, article 49 — three-year limitation on wage claims. Employee Retirement Benefit Security Act, article 9 — payment within 14 days of the last day.
- On 11 September 2026 articles 18, 60 and 61 were reopened. The gap this article had left — “could not read the appended table carrying the proportional formula” — is now narrowed to exactly where it sits (art. 18(2) → Decree art. 9(1) → Appendix 2), and the 15-hour threshold and the two promotion tracks are new. On 14 September 2026 that Appendix was opened — the appended-table viewer renders the text. The formula, the arithmetic and “fewer hours, the same days” are in a new section.
- 209 hours appears in no statute. It is (40 + 8) × 365 ÷ 7 ÷ 12 = 208.571 rounded. The 173.81 / 34.76 split, the 182.5 for a 35-hour week, and every amount in the tables are our own calculation.
Where to check further
- What your ordinary wage actually is. This article stops at the definition and the formula — which items count needs your payslip and employment rules together, and the labor helpline (1350) will assess them item by item.
- The proportional formula for part-time workers. It sits in Appendix 2 to the Enforcement Decree (art. 18(2) → Decree art. 9(1)). It is now quoted and worked through in this article (art. 18(2) → Decree art. 9(1) → Appendix 2, item 4(b)). What is left is how many hours a week the comparable worker at your own employer is on — the 8 hours in the formula is fixed, so that figure changes the answer.
- Your workplace's monthly contracted hours. 209 is the 40-hour-week figure — read the contracted hours in your employment contract and recalculate if they differ.
- Which track you are on. Under a year of service means article 61(2) dates — measuring against the year-or-more deadlines gives the wrong answer.
- Whether a promotion notice arrived that year. This is what decides between a payout and nothing — check your email and the company intranet. If nothing came, that absence is itself the evidence.
Written as at August 2026. The statutory text and definitions were read from the source, and the composition of the 209 hours and every amount in the tables are our own calculation. The proportional formula for part-time workers is taken from the text of Appendix 2 and checked by recomputation; whether particular allowances count as ordinary wage could not be verified and is not asserted. Real settlements turn on employment rules and payment practice, so confirm with payroll. For your own figures use the annual leave calculator; the statute as a whole is in the annual leave explainer. This is general information, not legal advice.
