In short: Korean employers and employees split three of Korea’s four mandatory social insurance premiums roughly down the middle, and the employer alone pays the fourth. The National Pension rate is on a legislated, multi-year rise through 2032. And the numbers below are set out article by article, so you (or your payroll provider) can check them directly against the law.
This article is for two readers at once: a small or mid-size foreign-invested employer in Korea setting up payroll, and an employee who wants to understand the four deduction lines on their own payslip. It is not legal advice, and it does not replace the law itself or a licensed labor consultant (노무사) or accountant.
The four insurances, 2026 rates
Korea requires four social insurance programs for employees at a covered workplace: National Pension, National Health Insurance (with its companion, long-term care insurance), Employment Insurance, and Industrial Accident Compensation Insurance. Three are split between employee and employer; one is paid by the employer alone.
| Insurance | Employee pays | Employer pays | Basis |
|---|---|---|---|
| National Pension | 4.75% | 4.75% | National Pension Act, Addendum No. 20903 (Apr. 2, 2025), Art. 4(1)(1) — 2026 rate |
| National Health Insurance | 3.595% | 3.595% | National Health Insurance Act Enforcement Decree Art. 44(1) (rate: 7.19% of remuneration); National Health Insurance Act Art. 76(1) (50/50 split) |
| Long-term care insurance | 0.4724% of remuneration (13.14% of your health insurance premium) | 0.4724% of remuneration (13.14% of the health insurance premium) | Act on Long-Term Care Insurance for Older Persons Art. 9(1) (premium = health insurance premium × long-term care rate ÷ health insurance rate); Enforcement Decree Art. 4 (rate: 9,448/1,000,000 = 0.9448%); Art. 11 applying National Health Insurance Act Art. 76(1) (50/50 split) |
| Employment Insurance — unemployment benefit | 0.90% | 0.90% | Act on the Collection of Insurance Premiums for Employment Insurance and Industrial Accident Compensation Insurance (“Premium Collection Act”) Art. 13(2), (4); Enforcement Decree Art. 12(1)(2) (unemployment-benefit rate: 18/1,000, split half and half) |
| Employment Insurance — employment stability & vocational competency development | 0% | 0.25%–0.85% (by company size) | Premium Collection Act Art. 13(4)(1); Enforcement Decree Art. 12(1)(1) |
| Industrial Accident Compensation Insurance | 0% | Industry-specific rate (2026 average 1.41%) + commuting-accident rate 0.06%, all industries | Premium Collection Act Art. 13(5); Art. 14(3), (7) (rate set by industry classification, paid entirely by the employer) |
A few notes on the table:
- The National Pension figure is not the number written in the main text of the Act. Article 88(3) of the National Pension Act sets the standard rate at 65/1,000 (6.50%) for each side, but a 2025 addendum (Addendum No. 20903) overrides that figure for 2026 through 2032 with a lower, rising schedule — see the next section.
- The 7.19% National Health Insurance rate is not fixed in the Act itself. Article 73(1) of the National Health Insurance Act only caps the rate at 80/1,000 and delegates the actual figure to a presidential decree; that decree (Enforcement Decree Art. 44(1)) sets it at 719/10,000, i.e., 7.19%, split 50/50 under Article 76(1) of the Act.
- Long-term care insurance is billed together with health insurance but is a separate premium under a separate act. The premium is your health insurance premium multiplied by the ratio of the long-term care rate to the health insurance rate (Act on Long-Term Care Insurance for Older Persons, Article 9(1)). With a long-term care rate of 0.9448% (Enforcement Decree, Article 4) and a health insurance rate of 7.19%, that ratio is 13.14%, which works out to 0.4724% of remuneration for each side. The employee/employer split follows the health insurance rule because Article 11 of the long-term care act applies Article 76 of the National Health Insurance Act. Scheduled change: an amendment effective November 27, 2026 adds a rounding rule to that ratio (rounded to four decimal places); the formula itself does not change (Act on Long-Term Care Insurance for Older Persons, Act No. 21690, Addenda Article 1 and Article 3).
- For Employment Insurance, the unemployment-benefit portion is split 50/50 by operation of Article 13(2) and (4) of the Premium Collection Act applied to the 18/1,000 rate set in the Enforcement Decree. The employment-stability and vocational-competency-development portion is paid by the employer only, and the rate step depends on how many regular employees the employer has across all of its workplaces in Korea (Enforcement Decree Art. 12(1)(1)). Scheduled change: an amendment to the Premium Collection Act takes effect on January 1, 2027 (Act No. 21472, Addenda Article 1). It changes the pay figure that the employment insurance and industrial accident insurance rates are applied to. Article 13(2), (4) and (5) will refer to each worker’s “remuneration” instead of “total remuneration”. An employee’s monthly premium will be calculated on that employee’s monthly remuneration instead of a monthly average (Article 16-3(1)). Employers will also report each worker’s monthly remuneration every month, instead of reporting the previous year’s total by March 15 (Article 16-10(1)). An employer that has filed the income data prescribed by Presidential Decree with the tax authorities is treated as having made that monthly report, unless the collecting agency (공단) cannot determine monthly pay from that data (Article 16-10(2)). Pay for 2026 is still reported as an annual total by March 15, 2027 (Addenda Article 2). For 2027, if a workplace has not made, and is not treated as having made, the monthly report, premiums are calculated on a monthly average derived from that annual total, or under the former rules (Addenda Article 3). The amendment does not change the 50/50 split in Article 13(2) or the rate-setting rules in Article 14.
- Industrial accident insurance is paid entirely by the employer (Premium Collection Act Art. 13(5)) and the rate depends on the employer’s industry classification, revised roughly every year. The specific 2026 industry-by-industry notice was not part of the law text reviewed for this article, so treat the 1.41% average and 0.06% commuting-accident figures as indicative only and confirm the current notice before running payroll.
One translation caution: the official English translation of Article 88 of the National Pension Act still shows the base 65/1,000 rate and does not carry the 2026–2032 transitional schedule added by the 2025 Korean-language addendum — so if you or your payroll provider are reading the English text of the Act, you will not see the current-year rate there at all.
National Pension: the rate is rising every year through 2032
Under Addendum No. 20903 to the National Pension Act (promulgated Apr. 2, 2025, effective Jan. 1, 2026), Article 4(1) sets a seven-year step schedule for the employee’s contribution and the employer’s contribution, each applied to the standard monthly income:
| Year | Employee | Employer |
|---|---|---|
| 2026 | 4.75% | 4.75% |
| 2027 | 5.00% | 5.00% |
| 2028 | 5.25% | 5.25% |
| 2029 | 5.50% | 5.50% |
| 2030 | 5.75% | 5.75% |
| 2031 | 6.00% | 6.00% |
| 2032 | 6.25% | 6.25% |
(National Pension Act, Addendum No. 20903, Art. 4(1)(1)–(7).)
If you are budgeting payroll cost multiple years out, build this schedule in rather than assuming the 2026 rate holds. Note also that the standard monthly income used as the base for this calculation is itself capped and floored each year; the current cap and floor are set by ministry notice and published by the National Pension Service, not in the Act itself.
Foreign employees: what the law actually says
Two provisions govern whether a foreign employee is enrolled the same way as a Korean employee.
National Pension (Art. 126). A foreign national employed at a covered workplace, or residing in Korea, is automatically a workplace-based or individually insured person under the National Pension Act — unless the foreign national’s home-country law does not extend an equivalent pension to Korean nationals (a reciprocity condition, Art. 126(1)). Separately, Article 126(4) exempts foreign insured persons from the Act’s lump-sum refund and related provisions (Arts. 77–79) except in narrower cases — including where the foreign national’s home-country law would itself pay a Korean national a lump-sum refund, and except for certain categories of foreign workers under the Act on the Employment of Foreign Workers and industrial trainees under the Immigration Act, who remain outside that exemption in the circumstances Article 126(4) lists.
National Health Insurance (Art. 109). Where the employer at a workplace is a foreign government, the Korean government may set separate health insurance arrangements for that workplace’s employees by agreement with the foreign government (Art. 109(1)). More generally, a foreign national or overseas Korean national residing in Korea who works as an employee, public official, or school employee at a covered workplace becomes an employee-insured person under the same Article 5 framework as a Korean national, once they meet one of the residence-registration conditions listed in Article 109(2) — for example, alien registration under Article 31 of the Immigration Act.
Neither provision, in the text reviewed, sets out a different contribution rate for foreign employees — the rates in the table above are the same rates. What differs is eligibility and registration mechanics, which is why this is worth checking case by case rather than assuming. If your home country has a social security agreement with Korea, that agreement can also change how the pension rules apply to you; the National Pension Service publishes the list of agreement countries.
What an employer actually has to do
At a mechanical level, an employer registers the workplace and each employee with the relevant insurer, withholds the employee’s share from wages each pay period, adds the employer’s own share, and remits both to the collecting agency. Under the National Pension Act, the National Health Insurance Service is designated to collect National Pension contributions on the National Pension Service’s behalf (Art. 88(1)–(2)), so in practice pension and health insurance premiums are billed and collected through the same channel, even though they are governed by separate acts. Employment insurance and industrial accident insurance premiums are billed together under the Premium Collection Act. Reporting deadlines, forms, and penalties for late or incorrect payment are set in enforcement rules and insurer procedures not covered here — confirm the current procedure with the relevant insurer or a labor consultant before your first payroll cycle, since procedural detail changes more often than the statutory rates do.
What an employee should check on their payslip
If you are an employee rather than an employer, your payslip should show four separate deduction lines, not one combined “insurance” figure:
- National Pension (국민연금) — should be roughly 4.75% of your standard monthly income for 2026 (see the table above for later years).
- National Health Insurance (건강보험) — should be roughly 3.595% of your monthly remuneration.
- Long-term care insurance (장기요양보험료) — usually listed as a small separate line next to health insurance, calculated off the health insurance premium rather than off your salary directly.
- Employment insurance (고용보험) — should be roughly 0.90% of your monthly remuneration; this is the unemployment-benefit portion only, since the employment-stability and vocational-competency-development portion, and all of the industrial accident insurance premium, are paid by your employer and should not appear as a deduction from your pay at all.
If a deduction line looks far off from these percentages, or if you see a fifth line labeled something like “industrial accident insurance” being deducted from your own pay, that is worth asking your employer or payroll provider about directly — industrial accident insurance is, by Article 13(5) of the Premium Collection Act, an employer-only cost.
Three common misunderstandings
“The employer pays for everything.” Not quite — the employer pays 100% of industrial accident insurance and the employment-stability/vocational-competency-development portion of employment insurance, but National Pension, National Health Insurance, and the unemployment-benefit portion of employment insurance are split roughly 50/50 with the employee.
“The National Pension rate is fixed.” It is not, at least not through 2032. It rises every year from 2026’s 4.75%/4.75% split to 2032’s 6.25%/6.25% split under a legislated addendum, and reflects a change from the rate that applied before this schedule took effect.
“Health insurance and long-term care insurance are the same premium.” They are billed together and often shown next to each other on a payslip, but they are calculated under two different acts (National Health Insurance Act and the Act on Long-Term Care Insurance for the Elderly), with the long-term care figure calculated as a rate applied to the health insurance premium rather than as an independent percentage of wages.
Bottom line
For 2026, an employee and employer each contribute 4.75% to National Pension and 3.595% to National Health Insurance, both split evenly; a small long-term care insurance premium is added on top, calculated off the health insurance premium; employment insurance is mostly split (0.90% each for unemployment benefits) with a small employer-only slice on top; and industrial accident insurance is entirely the employer’s cost, at a rate that depends on industry. Confirm the exact figures against the current text of each law — the industrial accident rate in particular changes every year by ministry notice — before finalizing a payroll setup.