In short: an employee who has worked at least 80% of a full year is entitled to 15 days of paid leave, with one extra day added for every two years of continuous service after the first year, up to a cap of 25 days; an employee with less than a year of service, or under 80% attendance, instead earns one paid day per month of full attendance (Labor Standards Act, Article 60). Employers can avoid having to pay out leave that expires unused only by following a specific written notice procedure (Labor Standards Act, Article 61), and workplaces with fewer than 5 employees are not covered by any of these annual-leave articles at all (Labor Standards Act, Article 11; Enforcement Decree of the Labor Standards Act, Article 7 and Attached Table 1).

How many days you get (Article 60(1), (2), (4))

The Labor Standards Act sets two separate tracks for earning annual paid leave, and most employees pass through both over time.

After a full year, with at least 80% attendance. An employer must grant 15 days of paid leave to any employee who has worked not less than 80 percent of one year (Labor Standards Act, Article 60(1)).

Before a full year, or under 80% attendance. An employee who has continuously worked for less than one year, or who has worked less than 80 percent of a full year, instead earns one day of paid leave for each month of full attendance (Labor Standards Act, Article 60(2)). This is a separate entitlement from the 15-day allowance in Article 60(1) — it is what covers a first-year employee before they reach the one-year mark, and it is what an employee who fell below 80% attendance in a given year gets instead of the 15-day figure.

Long-service add-on. For an employee who has continuously worked three years or more, the employer must add one day to the Article 60(1) allowance for every two years of continuous service beyond the first year. The total, including these added days, is capped at 25 days (Labor Standards Act, Article 60(4)). So the 15-day base grows by one day every two years past year one, but never exceeds 25 days regardless of how long the employee stays.

When you can take it, and who decides the date (Article 60(5))

The employer must grant the leave earned under Article 60(1) through (4) at the time the employee requests it, and must pay the employee’s ordinary wage or average wage — as set by the workplace’s rules of employment or equivalent — for that period (Labor Standards Act, Article 60(5)). The default, in other words, is that the employee picks the date.

There is one narrow exception: if granting leave on the date the employee requested would severely impede business operations, the employer may change the timing (Labor Standards Act, Article 60(5), proviso). The text allows changing when the leave is taken in that specific case — it does not let an employer deny the leave outright or reduce the number of days owed.

Periods that still count as attendance (Article 60(6))

For the purposes of the 80%-attendance threshold in Article 60(1) and the monthly full-attendance test in Article 60(2), several periods where an employee was not physically at work are still treated as attendance:

  1. Time off due to an injury or illness arising out of the employee’s duties;
  2. Time a pregnant employee takes off under the maternity-leave provisions of Article 74(1) through (3);
  3. Time off on childcare leave under Article 19 of the Equal Employment Opportunity and Work-Family Balance Assistance Act;
  4. Hours reduced under a childcare-related reduced-working-hours arrangement under Article 19-2(1) of the same Act;
  5. Hours reduced under a pregnancy-related reduced-working-hours arrangement under Article 74(7) of the Labor Standards Act.

(Labor Standards Act, Article 60(6).) These five categories matter because without them, an employee on protected leave for injury, pregnancy, or childcare could otherwise fall under the 80% attendance line and lose access to the full 15-day allowance for reasons outside their control.

When leave expires (Article 60(7))

Leave earned under Article 60(1), (2), and (4) must be used within one year, or it is extinguished. For an employee who has worked less than a year, that one-year clock for the Article 60(2) leave runs to the end of the employee’s first year of employment (Labor Standards Act, Article 60(7)). There is one exception built into the same provision: leave that goes unused because of reasons attributable to the employer does not expire.

The employer’s use-it-or-lose-it notice procedure (Article 61)

Article 61 gives an employer a way to avoid owing compensation for leave that lapses unused, but only by following a specific two-step written notice sequence — and the deadlines differ depending on whether the employee has completed a full year of service.

For leave under Article 60(1), (2), and (4), excluding a first-year employee’s Article 60(2) leave:

  1. No later than 10 days before the point that is six months ahead of the Article 60(7) expiry date, the employer must inform each employee in writing of how many days of unused leave they have, and formally urge them, in writing, to set dates and notify the employer.
  2. If the employee still has not notified the employer of dates within 10 days of that written urging, the employer must then set the dates for the employee’s remaining leave and notify the employee in writing, no later than two months before the expiry date.

(Labor Standards Act, Article 61(1).)

For a first-year employee’s leave under Article 60(2):

  1. No later than 10 days before the point that is three months ahead of the end of the employee’s first year, the employer must give the same written notice of unused days and urge the employee to set dates — except that leave that accrues after this first notice must be covered by a second, narrower notice: within 5 days, at the point one month before the first year ends.
  2. If the employee has not responded within 10 days of being urged, the employer must set the dates itself and notify the employee in writing, no later than one month before the first year ends (or, for that later-accrued leave, no later than 10 days before the first year ends).

(Labor Standards Act, Article 61(2).)

If the employer completes these steps and the employee still does not use the leave, the employer owes no compensation for the unused days, and the lapse is treated as not attributable to the employer under the Article 60(7) proviso (Labor Standards Act, Article 61(1)–(2)). If the employer skips or mishandles a step, that protection does not apply.

Substituting specific working days (Article 62)

An employer may, by a written agreement with the representative of the employees, have employees take annual paid leave on particular working days chosen in advance, in place of leave the employee would otherwise request individually (Labor Standards Act, Article 62). This is a collective, written-agreement mechanism — it requires an agreement with the employee representative, not a unilateral employer decision, and it substitutes for leave otherwise available under Article 60, rather than creating additional leave.

When leave pay is due (Enforcement Decree, Article 33)

The wages payable for annual paid leave under Article 60(5) must be paid on the regular pay day immediately before, or immediately after, the leave is granted (Enforcement Decree of the Labor Standards Act, Article 33). This provision only fixes the payment date — it does not change any of the eligibility, day-count, or expiry rules set out in Article 60.

Workplaces with fewer than 5 employees are not covered

The Labor Standards Act applies in full to any business or workplace that regularly employs 5 or more employees (Labor Standards Act, Article 11(1)). For a workplace with 4 or fewer employees, only the specific provisions listed in Attached Table 1 apply, as authorized by Article 11(2) (Labor Standards Act, Article 11(2); Enforcement Decree of the Labor Standards Act, Article 7).

Attached Table 1’s list for Chapter 4 (Working Hours and Rest) names only Article 54, Article 55(1), and Article 63 as applicable to workplaces with 4 or fewer employees (Enforcement Decree of the Labor Standards Act, Article 7 and Attached Table 1). Articles 60, 61, and 62 — the annual paid leave provisions covered in this article — are not on that list. The practical result: an employee at a workplace that regularly employs 4 or fewer people is not covered by the annual paid leave entitlement, the use-promotion procedure, or the leave-substitution mechanism described above.

Scheduled change: time-unit leave and anti-dismissal protection, effective June 10, 2027

Scheduled change: starting June 10, 2027, employers will be required to grant annual paid leave in time-unit, sub-day increments when an employee requests it that way, within limits to be set by Presidential Decree, and a new paragraph will bar dismissing an employee or treating them unfavorably for claiming or using annual paid leave. This changes Article 60 by inserting a new paragraph after the current paragraph (4) and adding a further new paragraph at the end, which shifts the numbering of the existing paragraphs (5) through (7) down by one; Article 61’s cross-references to “Article 60(7)” will need to be read as “Article 60(8)” once that renumbering takes effect. The specific number of hours and days available for time-unit division under the new provision is left to Presidential Decree.

What people often get wrong about annual leave

“New employees don’t get any paid leave until they’ve completed a full year.” This isn’t right. An employee who has worked for less than a year separately earns one day of paid leave for each month of full attendance, under Article 60(2) — distinct from, and in addition to the timeline for, the 15-day entitlement that kicks in after a full year under Article 60(1). Those monthly days are not banked indefinitely, though: unless the employer’s own fault kept you from using them, they are extinguished when your first year of work ends (Article 60(7)), so plan to use them before your one-year anniversary.

“My small company doesn’t have to follow the same rules as a big company, but it still has to give me some paid leave.” For a workplace that regularly employs 4 or fewer people, the answer is actually that none of Articles 60, 61, or 62 apply at all — not a reduced version of them. Attached Table 1 to the Enforcement Decree, which lists exactly which Labor Standards Act provisions extend to workplaces of that size, does not include the annual leave articles.

“If I don’t use my leave, my employer automatically owes me cash for it.” Not automatically, and not never. Unused leave generally expires if not used within one year, and leave earned under Article 60(2) by an employee with less than a year of service expires when that first year of work ends (Article 60(7)). Article 61 releases the employer from compensating for that unused leave only if it completed the written use-promotion steps on time; if it did not, that release does not apply.

A worked example

Take an employee who joined a workplace with 30 regular employees on March 1, 2026, and worked without interruption.

For each period of leave the employee actually takes, the employer must pay ordinary or average wages, on the regular pay day immediately before or after the leave, under Article 60(5) and Enforcement Decree Article 33 — the same wage concept discussed for standard hourly and monthly pay calculations in Korea’s minimum wage for 2026 and 2027.

A note on translations: the official English translation of the Labor Standards Act was published on October 22, 2024, before the Korean amendments effective August 20, 2026 and October 8, 2026, so treat the English text as a guide and check the current Korean text for anything time-sensitive.