As of March 2019, public holidays are not mandatory holidays that employers are required by law to grant to employees. Public holidays are determined based on the regulation on closure days for public offices.
Here is the list of public holidays for 2019.
- Jan. 1 (New year’s day)
- Feb. 4 to 6 (Lunar new years days: – December 31st, January 1st and 2nd on the lunar calendar)
- March 1st. (Independence movement day)
- May 5 (Children’s day)
- May 12 (Buddha’s birthday: April 8th of the lunar calendar)
- Jun. 6 (Memorial day)
- Aug. 15 (Independence day)
- Sept. 12 to 14 (Chuseok Holidays: August 14th, 15th and 16th on the lunar calendar)
- Oct. 3 (National foundation day)
- Oct. 9 (Korean Alphabet day)
- Dec. 25 (Christmas day)
- Election days based on the Public Official Election Act
- Other days temporarily designated by the government
The same regulation has an article on substitute holidays. When some public holidays overlap with other public holidays or Sunday or Saturday, an work day following them become substitute holidays.
Substitute holiday system only applies to Lunar New Year Holidays, Chuseok Holidays and Children’s Day.
When Lunar New year Holidays or Chuseok Holidays overlap with Sunday or public holidays, the first work day after the holidays become holidays. When Children’s day overlaps with Sunday, Saturday or public holidays, the first workdays thereafter become a holiday.
Currently, public holidays are not mandatory holidays for private companies. It is up to an employer to grant them to employees or not.
Whether to make the public holidays paid or unpaid is also up to the employer. Usually, most companies in Korea, except for small ones, voluntarily grant public holidays as paid holidays to employees.
However, public holidays will become mandatory paid holidays by law from the year 2020. Article 55 of the Labor Standards Act (LSA) has a detailed schedule.
Here is the schedule.
- From Jan. 1st, 2020, companies with 300 or more employees should grant public holidays as paid holidays to employees.
- From Jan. 1st, 2021, companies with 30 to 299 employees should do the same.
- From, Jan. 1st, 2022, companies with 5 to 29 employees should do the same.
Companies with less than five employees are exempt from the mandatory system.
* An employer can have employees to have paid holidays on other work days instead of public holidays as long as he signs a written agreement with an employee representative. The employee representative is a majority labor union. If there is no such union, an employee representative should be selected by majority of employees.
Am employer should be cautious with these mandatory public holidays. The LSA will treat them in the same manner as paid weekly holidays in terms of premium pay.
If you make employees work on a paid weekly holiday (usually Sunday), you should pay the employee holiday-work premium (50 percent of hourly ordinary wage) for the first 8 hours.
You should pay both holiday-work premium and overtime premium (respectively 50 percent of hourly ordinary wage) for work hours exceeding 8 hours. From 2020, this premium pay system will apply to work done on paid public holidays as well.