Korea's civil service does not have one pay table. It has twelve, one per occupational group, published as annexes to the Public Officials Remuneration Regulation. We laid all twelve side by side — and the pattern that came out was not the one we expected.
1. What does it pay. Pick a table and a grade and step, and you get monthly base pay and estimated gross annual pay. The amounts are the Ministry of Personnel Management tables verbatim.
2. What gets missed. The table is not the payslip. The ₩160,000 meal allowance and 60% holiday bonus the calculator adds are assumptions, and pension contributions and health insurance are not applied because we could not open the source — so this article gives no net figure.
3. What the tables reveal. The occupational tables are pinned to the general-service grades — a researcher's step 1 matches grade 5 to the last digit. And the teacher table stalls at step 8.
Why step 1 matches across occupations
| Table · occupational group | Step 1 | Matches |
|---|---|---|
| Table 5 researcher · Table 6 advisor | ₩2,896,400 | grade 5, step 1 |
| Table 3-2 career specialist, group A | ₩2,896,400 | grade 5, step 1 |
| Table 5 assoc. researcher · 3-2 group B | ₩2,317,100 | grade 7, step 1 |
| Table 6 assistant advisor | ₩2,162,100 | grade 8, step 1 |
| Table 3 general service, grade 9 | ₩2,133,000 | — |
| Table 4 public safety · Table 8 postal | ₩2,133,000 | identical |
| Table 10 constable · Table 13 sergeant | ₩2,133,000 | identical |
| Table 11 school teacher | ₩2,041,500 | matches no grade |
Equal starting points do not mean equal paths. They separate at step 2 — general service goes to ₩2,147,600, public safety to ₩2,148,600, a police constable to ₩2,155,600 (our comparison). The constable pulls ahead by ₩8,000 straight away.
Teachers are the one group tied to nothing. Table 11 starts at ₩2,041,500, which is ₩91,500 below the six tables that share ₩2,133,000 and matches no cell in the general-service table. Against the 2026 minimum wage converted to a month of 209 hours (₩2,156,880), it sits ₩115,380 lower (our calculation). We looked at what that means for a starting official in the grade-9 first salary.
Why the teacher table stalls at step 8
Table 11 runs to step 40 — longer than the grade-9 column's 31. Subtracting every neighbouring pair showed one broken stair in the middle.
| Steps | Increase | Note |
|---|---|---|
| 1 → 8, average | ₩62,442 | steady |
| 8 → 9 | ₩17,000 | 27% of the preceding average |
| 9 → 10 | ₩21,100 | still thin |
| 13 → 14 | ₩116,200 | recovery |
| 32 → 33 | ₩146,400 | largest of the 39 |
This is the exact inverse of grade 9. On the general-service table, step 8 to 9 is the biggest jump of all (₩89,200); on the teacher table it is the smallest (₩17,000). The same interval is a peak on one table and a trough on the other.
Why the stair breaks there is not written anywhere in the table. The annex carries amounts only, so we could not verify the reason.
The full range, though, is far wider for teachers — ₩2,041,500 to ₩6,205,700 is 3.04x, against 1.75x for grade 9 over its 31 steps (our calculation). Teachers start later and travel further.
Who meets at the top of the tables
We ran the same exercise at the other end. Pulling the highest figure from each table produced matching numbers across unrelated annexes.
- A four-star general and a national university president both sit at ₩9,618,800. The figure in Table 13's notes and the one listed in Table 12's notes for the presidents of Kangwon, Kyungpook, Chonnam, Chungnam and others are identical to the won.
- A lieutenant general and the presidents of the colleges of education, Korea National Sport University and Mokpo Maritime University all sit at ₩9,447,300.
- Public safety grade 1 step 23 and senior police commissioner step 23 both end at ₩8,250,400.
- The highest figure on any step table is the constitutional researcher at step 16, ₩9,586,300 (Table 14). That table alone is printed in reverse, step 16 at the top down to step 1.
- General service grade 1 step 23 tops out at ₩8,001,400 — ₩249,000 below the public safety and police tables.
This is not a claim that a university president is treated like a general. The tables fix base pay only, and allowances differ completely by group. What we confirmed is narrow: the number in the base-pay cell is the same.
What only the military table shows
| Rank | Monthly pay | vs grade 9, step 1 |
|---|---|---|
| Sergeant (conscript) | ₩1,500,000 | 70.3% |
| Corporal | ₩1,200,000 | 56.3% |
| Private first class | ₩900,000 | 42.2% |
| Private | ₩750,000 | 35.2% |
| Staff sergeant, step 1 (career) | ₩2,133,000 | 100% (identical) |
Private to sergeant is exactly 2x (our calculation), and sergeant to career staff sergeant is another 1.42x — ₩1,500,000 to ₩2,133,000. Conscript pay has no steps: it is a flat figure per rank, so time served changes nothing within a rank.
Military academy cadets are listed separately at ₩1,215,000 in the first year and ₩1,650,000 in the fourth (Table 13 notes).
Does the table figure reach your account
Each annex sets one line: base pay. Actual pay adds allowances and subtracts contributions and tax.
Take-home = base pay + allowances − (civil-service pension, health insurance, income tax, etc.)
We could not open the allowance regulation, so this article states no take-home figure. For how the private-sector side works, our net salary calculator and net pay table use the four insurance agencies' own published rates.
Questions that remain
What is grade-9 step-1 pay in 2026?
₩2,133,000 a month, from Table 3. We dropped the year-on-year increase because we could not obtain the 2025 table.
Do teachers use the general-service table?
No — Table 11, steps 1 to 40 for kindergarten through high school, and Table 12, steps 1 to 33 for national university faculty.
Are there tables for police, firefighters and the military?
Yes — Table 10 and Table 13. Their step-1 and top figures appear above.
How does a step advance?
The advancement cycle and prior-service credit are not in the pay tables, so we could not verify them. The tables answer how much a step is worth, not when it arrives.
Why do two people on the same step take home different amounts?
Because the allowances differ. Position allowance varies by grade; overtime, family and special-duty allowances vary by post and circumstance.
Sources
- Ministry of Personnel Management — agency source — Public Officials Remuneration Regulation, Table 3 (general service, grades 1–9). Source for the general-service figures throughout. Amounts are the regulation's own monthly figures in won. Ministry of Personnel Management, civil service pay
- Ministry of Personnel Management — agency source — the same regulation's Tables 3-2, 4, 5, 6, 8, 10, 11, 12, 13 and 14. Source for the step-1 matching, the highest figures, conscript pay and the fixed presidential rates.
- Minimum Wage Council — agency source — ₩10,320 an hour for 2026 and the 209-hour monthly conversion of ₩2,156,880, used for the teacher comparison. Minimum Wage Council, current minimum wage
- Our own calculation — the step-1 matching, the per-step increments (30 intervals on grade 9, 39 on the teacher table), the 3.04x and 1.75x ranges, the conscript ratios and the gaps of ₩91,500, ₩115,380 and ₩249,000 are ours, derived from the tables.
Where to check further
- The allowance regulations themselves. The ₩160,000 meal allowance, 60% holiday bonus and the position allowance range are all assumptions — the Regulation on Public Officials' Allowances on the National Law Information Center carries the actual amounts.
- Pension contribution rates and how health insurance applies. We could not open the source, so no net figure appears here — the Government Employees Pension Service (1588-4321) gives contribution rates, and your own payroll office the actual deductions.
- Step progression, credited experience, and local government tables. All sit outside the pay tables, and this article follows the national remuneration regulation — the national and local regulations are both on the National Law Information Center.
As of July 2026. Every won figure is copied from the Ministry of Personnel Management's own annexes; the matching, gaps, ratios and increments are our arithmetic. Allowances and deductions are excluded — for an actual figure, check the payslip. For the grade-9 starting salary see the grade-9 first salary, for a private-sector comparison the net pay table, for hourly work the part-time pay calculator, and for life after service retirement preparation by age.
