If you work part-time in Korea, there is a number you should know before you agree to anything: 10,320 won per hour. That is the statutory minimum wage for 2026. From January 2027 it becomes 10,700 won.
What makes this worth writing about is not the number itself. It is what the law does when a contract says something lower — and how little your nationality has to do with any of it.
Who it applies to
The Minimum Wage Act says it applies to all businesses that employ workers. The exceptions listed are narrow: businesses employing only cohabiting relatives, domestic workers in a household, and seafarers covered by the Seafarers Act.
Nationality is not on that list. Neither is visa status, contract length, or whether you are a student.
The Labor Standards Act goes further and says it directly. An employer may not discriminate in working conditions on grounds of nationality, religion, or social status. That is Article 6, and it sits near the front of the Act rather than in some annex.
So the answer to "does the minimum wage apply to foreign workers" is yes, and the answer to "can they pay me less because I am not Korean" is no, in writing, in the statute.
What happens if the contract says less
This is the part most people do not know, and it is the reason a bad contract is less binding than it looks.
Under Article 6(3) of the Minimum Wage Act, where a contract sets pay below the minimum, that part of the contract is void. And it does not simply disappear — the law then treats the contract as if it had said the legal minimum.
Read that again if you signed something at 8,000 won an hour. You are not bound to 8,000. You are owed the minimum, and the paperwork saying otherwise carries no weight on this point.
Paying below the minimum is also an offence. Article 28(1) sets up to three years' imprisonment or a fine of up to 20 million won, and notes that both may be imposed together.
None of this requires you to have negotiated well, or to have understood the contract when you signed it. The floor is set by statute, not by agreement.
Get the terms in writing
Article 17 of the Labor Standards Act requires the employer to specify, when the contract is made, the wage, contractual working hours, weekly paid holidays under Article 55, and annual paid leave under Article 60.
More usefully, Article 17(2) requires the employer to give you a written document — electronic documents count — setting out the components of the wage, how it is calculated, how it is paid, plus the hours, holidays and leave.
This is an obligation on the employer, not a favour to request. If you have been working for weeks with nothing in writing, that is not normal practice you have to accept.
The 15-hour line
There is one threshold worth understanding, because it is often explained wrongly.
Article 18(3) says that for a worker whose contractual hours average under 15 hours per week over four weeks, Articles 55 and 60 do not apply. Article 55 is the weekly paid day off. Article 60 is annual paid leave.
So under 15 hours, those two entitlements fall away.
What does not fall away is the minimum wage. There is no 15-hour threshold in the Minimum Wage Act. Six hours a week is still paid at no less than the statutory rate per hour. If someone tells you short hours mean the minimum does not apply, they are describing a rule that does not exist.
If the terms turn out to be false
Article 19 covers the case where the conditions specified under Article 17 differ from reality. The worker may claim damages for the breach and may terminate the contract immediately.
There is a provision attached that tells you something about who the law had in mind. If the contract is terminated in that situation and the worker had relocated for the job, the employer must pay travel costs for the return journey.
Article 20 adds a related protection: an employer may not agree in advance on a penalty or fixed damages for breach of the employment contract. Clauses promising to charge you a set amount if you quit early are not enforceable on that basis.
What the employer is supposed to post
Article 11 of the Minimum Wage Act requires employers to post the applicable minimum wage where workers can easily see it, or otherwise make it widely known to them.
It is a small provision, and it is the reason you sometimes see a printed notice near the staff area of a shop. If you have never seen one at your workplace, that is worth noticing.
Before any of this applies
One thing has to come first. If you are on a student visa, working at all requires permission in advance — the wage rules only come into play once you are lawfully working. That permission, and what happens without it, is covered in working part-time on a student visa in Korea.
And if you have moved recently or renewed your passport since starting the job, there are separate 15-day reporting deadlines that have nothing to do with your employer. Those are in the Immigration Act deadlines.
In short
The minimum wage in Korea is 10,320 won per hour in 2026 and 10,700 won from 2027. It applies to all businesses employing workers, with no nationality condition, and the Labor Standards Act separately prohibits discrimination in working conditions on grounds of nationality. A contract setting pay below the minimum is void as to that part and is treated as if it stated the legal minimum. Under 15 hours a week, weekly paid holidays and annual leave do not apply — but the hourly minimum still does.
The figures come from Ministry of Employment and Labor notices; the rules come from the current text of the Minimum Wage Act and the Labor Standards Act. Individual situations turn on facts a general article cannot know, so if something has already gone wrong, take the specifics to a labor office rather than relying on a summary.
