The four insurances
The four insurances are National Pension, health, long-term care, and employment insurance. Long-term care is charged on the health-insurance premium (not on wage), and industrial-accident insurance is paid entirely by the employer. The rates shown are the ones in force for 2026 and come from the Ministry of Health and Welfare and Ministry of Employment and Labor notices and the National Pension Service; none of them carries our final sign-off.
What the four insurances are
In Korea, four social insurances are deducted from an employee’s pay before anything else: National Pension (국민연금), health insurance (건강보험), long-term care insurance (장기요양보험), and employment insurance (고용보험) — together the 4대보험. Only the employee half comes off your payslip; your employer pays a matching (or larger) share separately. Each rate below is charged on the remuneration base(보수월액), which is your monthly gross minus the non-taxable portion — a meal allowance of up to ₩200,000 a month is excluded from that base by default in this calculator.
| Insurance | Employee rate | Charged on |
|---|---|---|
| National Pension (국민연금) | 4.75% | Standard monthly income, within a floor and ceiling |
| Health insurance (건강보험) | 3.595% | Remuneration base (보수월액) |
| Long-term care (장기요양) | 13.14% of the health premium | The health-insurance premium — not wage |
| Employment insurance (고용보험) | 0.9% | Remuneration base (보수월액) |
National Pension: watch the ceiling
National Pension is charged at 4.75% for the employee on your standard monthly income (기준소득월액) — but that base is held between a floor and a ceiling. For the period 1 July 2026 to 30 June 2027 the ceiling is ₩6,590,000 and the floor is ₩410,000. Earn above the ceiling and the pension contribution stops rising; the extra income adds nothing more to it. This band is the detail people miss most, because it is reset on a non-calendar cycle: the government fixes it each spring to run from July 2026 to June 2027, not January to December, so it can change in the middle of a tax year.
Health insurance, and the long-term-care trap
Health insurance is 3.595% for the employee on the remuneration base. Long-term care insurance is where most calculators go wrong: it is not a percentage of your wage. It is 13.14% of the health-insurance premium— a percentage of a percentage. So the base it rides on is whatever health premium you already owe, not your salary. Get that nesting wrong and the figure is off; this calculator computes the health premium first, then takes long-term care from it.
Employment insurance, and what the employer carries
Employment insurance (the unemployment-benefit portion) is 0.9% for the employee. One more insurance exists — industrial-accident insurance (산재보험) — but it is paid entirely by the employer. It never appears as a deduction on your payslip and is not part of your take-home, so this calculator leaves it out of the employee total and shows the employer’s cost separately.
A note on rounding
Each premium is truncated to the won (원단위 절사) in practice — a payroll convention rather than a headline rate. This calculator models that truncation, so a real payslip may differ by a few won from a naive percentage. The exact unit of truncation is a modeled assumption, flagged for review.
The rates on this page are transcribed from named primary sources and are the ones in force for 2026; a very recent change may not have reached this page yet, and none of them has been through this site’s own review and sign-off — for the amount that binds you, check with your employer or the National Tax Service.
The content of this page is still being expanded.