In short: if your contractual (scheduled) hours average at least 15 a week and you attend every scheduled workday in a given week, your employer owes you one paid holiday for that week — worth 8 hours’ pay on a standard 40-hour schedule (Ministry of Employment and Labor Notice No. 2025-47), or a proportional amount on a shorter schedule (Labor Standards Act, Article 55(1); Enforcement Decree of the Labor Standards Act, Article 30(1)). Korean workplaces call this 주휴수당 (weekly holiday pay). Average under 15 hours a week, and none of this applies to you at all (Labor Standards Act, Article 18(3)).
A note on translations: the Labor Standards Act’s official English translation was published on October 22, 2024, before the Korean amendments effective August 20, 2026 and October 8, 2026. If you read the English version directly, treat it as a guide and check the current Korean text for anything time-sensitive.
What the weekly holiday actually is
The core obligation is short: an employer must guarantee employees at least one paid holiday per week on average (Labor Standards Act, Article 55(1)). The Enforcement Decree then attaches a condition to that guarantee: the paid holiday under Article 55(1) is to be given to a person who has attended all of their scheduled workdays for that week without absence (Enforcement Decree of the Labor Standards Act, Article 30(1)).
Put together, this is a week-by-week test, not a one-time entitlement you earn and keep forever. Each week resets: if you worked every day you were scheduled to work that week, you are owed one paid holiday for that week, in addition to your regular pay for hours actually worked. That paid holiday is what is commonly called 주휴수당 (weekly holiday pay) — the wage value of the day itself, since the day is a holiday and no work is expected on it.
The law does not specify which day of the week has to be the paid holiday, and for most workers with a fixed schedule it lines up with a regular day off (often Sunday), but the statute’s language is about a paid holiday guaranteed “on average” per week, not a named calendar day.
Who is covered — and who isn’t
The 15-hour floor. Article 55 (along with Article 60, on annual leave) does not apply at all to an employee whose contractual work hours average less than 15 hours a week over four weeks — or over the actual period worked, if the employment is shorter than four weeks (Labor Standards Act, Article 18(3)). This is measured as an average, so a schedule that varies week to week is checked against the four-week average, not any single week in isolation. If that average comes out under 15 hours, weekly holiday pay does not apply for that period at all — it is not reduced, it is removed.
Small workplaces are not exempt from this specific rule. The Labor Standards Act’s general coverage provision applies the Act to workplaces with five or more regularly employed workers, and allows only some provisions to reach workplaces with four or fewer employees, as set by Presidential Decree (Labor Standards Act, Article 11(1)–(2)). That decree — the Enforcement Decree’s Article 7 and its attached Table 1 — lists exactly which provisions extend down to workplaces with four or fewer employees, and Article 55(1) (the paid weekly holiday provision) is one of the entries listed under the chapter on working hours and rest (Enforcement Decree of the Labor Standards Act, Article 7 and Table 1, which lists Article 55(1) among the provisions applied to workplaces with four or fewer employees). In practice, this means the weekly holiday obligation itself is not limited to workplaces with five or more employees.
Part-time workers are covered, proportionally. There is no separate minimum-hours exclusion for part-time work beyond the 15-hour floor above. Instead, a part-time employee’s terms of employment — including how weekly holiday hours are counted — are determined by the ratio of their contracted hours to a comparable full-time employee’s hours at the same workplace doing the same kind of work (Labor Standards Act, Article 18(1)).
How much it’s worth: three examples
For a full-time employee on a standard 40-hour week, one paid weekly holiday is conventionally counted as worth 8 hours’ pay — the same 8-hour figure used to build the 209-standard-hours-a-month calculation behind the published minimum wage (see Korea’s minimum wage in 2026 and 2027). For a part-time schedule, that 8-hour reference point is scaled down using the same hours-ratio the Act sets for part-time terms of employment (Labor Standards Act, Article 18(1)). The three examples below use the 2026 hourly minimum wage of ₩10,320 (Ministry of Employment and Labor Notice No. 2025-47).
1. Full-time, 40 hours a week, full attendance. Attending every scheduled workday that week, the weekly holiday is worth 8 hours × ₩10,320 = ₩82,560 (Labor Standards Act, Article 55(1)). Combined with the 40 hours actually worked, the week’s total pay is 48 hours × ₩10,320 = ₩495,360.
2. Part-time, 20 hours a week, full attendance. In this example, where the comparable full-time worker is on a 40-hour, five-day week, twenty hours is half of that schedule, so the weekly holiday hours scale down proportionally to 4 hours (20/40 of the 8-hour reference) (Labor Standards Act, Article 18(1)); the detailed calculation criteria are delegated to a Presidential Decree (Article 18(2)), which this article does not reproduce, so the 20/40 ratio should not be read as a general formula for every schedule. 4 hours × ₩10,320 = ₩41,280. Combined with the 20 hours worked, the week’s total pay is 24 hours × ₩10,320 = ₩247,680.
3. Part-time, averaging under 15 hours a week. Say a worker is scheduled 14 hours a week on average over four weeks. Because that average is below 15 hours, Article 55 does not apply to this worker at all (Labor Standards Act, Article 18(3)) — there is no weekly holiday pay, regardless of attendance. Pay for the week is simply 14 hours × ₩10,320 = ₩144,480, with no addition for a weekly holiday.
Why it matters for minimum-wage checks. When your wage is set by the week or the month, the minimum-wage comparison counts paid weekly holiday hours too: a weekly wage is divided by your weekly contractual hours plus the hours paid under Article 55(1) of the Labor Standards Act, and a monthly wage by that weekly figure multiplied by the average number of weeks in a year and divided by 12 (Enforcement Decree of the Minimum Wage Act, Article 5(1)2–3). On a 40-hour schedule this is the 209-hour monthly figure in the notice, which includes 8 paid weekly holiday hours (Ministry of Employment and Labor Notice No. 2025-47).
Absences, lateness, and quitting mid-week
The only condition the Enforcement Decree attaches to weekly holiday pay is that the employee has attended all scheduled workdays for that week (Enforcement Decree of the Labor Standards Act, Article 30(1)) — the decree’s own word for this is 개근, meaning perfect attendance on scheduled workdays. A few practical situations that follow directly from that wording:
- Missing a scheduled workday. If you did not attend a day you were scheduled to work that week, you have not achieved perfect attendance for that week under Enforcement Decree of the Labor Standards Act, Article 30(1), so the paid weekly holiday for that particular week would not be owed.
- Lateness, leaving early, or starting or ending employment mid-week. The decree text itself speaks only of attending every scheduled workday in the week. How lateness, leaving early, or starting or ending employment partway through a week is treated is a matter of Ministry of Employment and Labor guidance and interpretation, which this article does not cover.
If you’re required to work on your weekly holiday
Because the weekly holiday is a holiday under the Act, having an employee work on it counts as holiday work. At a workplace with five or more regularly employed workers, that work carries its own wage premium on top of ordinary pay: at least 50% extra for up to 8 hours of holiday work, and at least 100% extra for any holiday work beyond 8 hours (Labor Standards Act, Article 56(2)). Article 56 is not among the provisions applied to workplaces with four or fewer employees (Enforcement Decree of the Labor Standards Act, Article 7 and attached Table 1), so this premium does not apply there, even though the paid weekly holiday itself does. How this premium combines with the weekly holiday pay for the same week is a matter of Ministry of Employment and Labor guidance, which this article does not cover.
Three common misconceptions
“Weekly holiday pay is a bonus you have to ask for.” It isn’t discretionary. Where the conditions in Article 55(1) and Enforcement Decree of the Labor Standards Act, Article 30(1) are met — at least 15 hours a week on average, and perfect attendance on scheduled workdays that week — the paid holiday is a statutory entitlement, not something granted at an employer’s discretion.
“Only employees at large companies get weekly holiday pay.” As set out above, the Enforcement Decree of the Labor Standards Act, Article 7 and Table 1, lists Article 55(1) among the provisions applied to workplaces with four or fewer employees, so a small headcount by itself does not remove this particular obligation.
“If I miss one day, I lose my weekly holiday pay for the whole month.” The attendance condition in Enforcement Decree of the Labor Standards Act, Article 30(1) is checked week by week, not month by month. An absence in one week affects that week’s weekly holiday only; it does not, on the text of that provision alone, reach into other weeks where you did attend every scheduled workday.