Korea Salary in Kyrgyzstani Som

The 2026 minimum wage is ₩10,320 an hour, or ₩2,156,880 a month for 209 paid hours — about KGS 142,468 at the rate of 24 Oct 2026. With 40 hours of overtime a month at 1.5× it is about ₩2,776,080 before deductions.

₩10,320 per hour from 1 January 2026 (up 2.9% from ₩10,030). For a 40-hour week that is ₩2,156,880 a month, because the paid weekly rest day makes it 209 paid hours. It applies to foreign workers exactly as to Korean workers.

In workplaces with 5 or more employees, hours beyond 40 a week are paid at 150%, night work (22:00–06:00) gets an extra 50%, and holiday work is paid at 150% for the first 8 hours. Workplaces with fewer than 5 employees do not have to pay these premiums.

The Labor Standards Act's working-hours and overtime-premium rules do not apply to agriculture and livestock, so pay for extra hours depends on your contract — usually the normal hourly rate.

Health insurance (3.595%), long-term care insurance (0.4724%), employment insurance (0.9%), a small income tax plus 10% local tax, and — depending on your nationality — national pension (4.75%). Workers from Cambodia, China, Indonesia, Kyrgyzstan, Laos, Mongolia, Philippines, Sri Lanka, Tajikistan, Thailand, Uzbekistan, Vietnam pay national pension, which E-9 workers get back as a lump-sum refund when they leave Korea. Workers from Bangladesh, Myanmar, Nepal, Pakistan, Timor-Leste are excluded from national pension.

Yes. After a year or more with an employer you are entitled to severance of about one month's average wage per year worked. For E-9 workers it is paid mainly through the employer's departure guarantee insurance when you leave Korea.

Registration is done through Kyrgyzstan's official sending agency, the Center for Employment of Citizens Abroad (CEC), not through a Korean website. Watch its notices for the next EPS-TOPIK round, and practise for the test in advance — cut-offs in competitive rounds have reached 97.5/100.