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Korea severance pay calculator
Enter your hire date, your last day of work and your pay for the last three months. You get the days employed, the daily average wage and the severance pay before tax, worked out with the same formula and rounding as the Ministry of Employment and Labor's calculator.
Rules of
The leaving date is the day after your last day of work.
An estimate before tax, using Korean law and the ministry's method as of 30 October 2026. Retirement income tax is not calculated; the amount actually paid can differ with your payslips and your employer's rules.
How the amount is worked outHow this works
The formula
Severance pay in Korea (퇴직금, toejikgeum) is the daily average wage × 30 × (days employed ÷ 365). The Employee Retirement Benefit Security Act, Article 8, requires at least 30 days of average wage for each year of service, and this page uses the same formula as the Ministry of Employment and Labor's own severance calculator.
Enter the worked example from the ministry's calculator page — hired 2 October 2014, leaving date 16 September 2017, 1,080 days — and this page gives a daily average wage of 88,641.31 won and severance pay of 7,868,434 won, the same as the ministry's calculator. Several other dates and amounts run through that calculator are fixed in this page's tests.
The leaving date and the three months
Type the last day you worked. The ministry's calculator asks for the leaving date as the day after the last day worked, so this page takes that next day as the leaving date and counts the days employed from the hire date to it. Severance pay needs at least a year: the leaving date has to be on or after the first anniversary of the hire date.
The average wage is the pay of the three months before the leaving date divided by the number of days in them (Labor Standards Act, Article 2). The window runs from the same day three months earlier to the day before leaving, so it is 89 to 92 days long. When that day does not exist three months earlier, the page follows the ministry's calculator: leaving on 30 or 31 May starts the window on 1 March, and leaving on 31 July starts it on 30 April.
What goes into the average
The three-month total is pay before tax and deductions: base pay plus the allowances paid each month. If you only know your monthly pay, choose “Monthly pay”: full months count in full, and a part month counts by its share of days (15 days of a 30-day month is half). A yearly bonus and annual-leave pay count for 3/12 of the year's amount, as in the ministry's example.
The daily average wage is rounded up at the second decimal place, and the severance pay is rounded to the nearest won — the rounding the ministry's calculator uses. If you enter a daily ordinary wage (the fixed pay for normal hours) and it is higher, it is used instead: the Labor Standards Act says the average wage is never taken below the ordinary wage.
Who qualifies, and what is left out
Someone who worked less than a year, or less than 15 hours a week on a four-week average, is outside the severance system (Article 4 of the same act); the page says so instead of showing an amount. Workplaces with fewer than five people are covered too (Article 3), and the employer has to pay within 14 days of the leaving date (Article 9).
The result is before tax: retirement income tax is not calculated. Periods the law takes out of the average — parental leave, maternity leave, time off for a work injury and the like — are not handled, and if your employer runs a retirement pension plan the amount may differ. The dates and amounts you type are calculated in your browser and are not sent anywhere.
Daily average wage × 30 × (days employed ÷ 365). The daily average wage is the pay of the three months before the leaving date, plus 3/12 of a yearly bonus and of annual-leave pay, divided by the days in those three months. The leaving date is the day after your last day of work. This page follows the Ministry of Employment and Labor's calculator, including its rounding.
Do I get severance pay if I worked less than a year?
No. Severance pay needs at least a year of continuous work and, on a four-week average, at least 15 hours a week (Employee Retirement Benefit Security Act, Article 4). The size of the workplace does not matter: it applies with fewer than five workers too.
Is the amount shown what I will receive?
It is an estimate before tax. Retirement income tax is not calculated, and periods such as parental leave, a retirement pension plan or your employer's own rules can change the amount. Check it against your payslips and your employer's settlement.