"What will I actually take home?" is the first question every English teacher heading to Korea asks — and the answer is buried in Reddit threads, never a tool. This teaching in Korea (EPIK / hagwon) net salary calculator turns your contract's gross monthly salary into real net pay after Korea's National Pension, National Health Insurance, employment insurance, and income tax, then converts it to your home currency so you can compare a Seoul offer to home. It is built specifically for the EPIK and hagwon pay structure, including the housing that most contracts provide.
Enter your monthly gross salary and whether housing is provided, and the calculator returns your monthly and annual net pay in won and US dollars, plus the value of employer-provided housing.
Your contract quotes a gross monthly figure — commonly 2.1 to 2.7 million KRW for first-year EPIK and hagwon teachers. From that, Korea deducts four mandatory items: National Pension, National Health Insurance (with a long-term-care add-on), employment insurance, and income tax (national plus a 10% local surtax). What remains is your net take-home. Because most teaching contracts also provide free housing, your effective compensation is meaningfully higher than the net cash alone.
EPIK (public schools) offers standardized pay scales, a settlement allowance, paid vacation, and usually a furnished apartment or housing allowance. Hagwons (private academies) vary more: pay can be a little higher to offset fewer holidays, housing is typically provided, and severance plus a return airfare are standard at contract completion. The deductions are the same under Korean law; the differences are in gross pay, vacation, and the exact housing arrangement.
A first-year teacher on 2,500,000 KRW/month with free housing worth about 500,000 KRW:
| Item | Monthly (KRW) |
|---|---|
| Gross salary | 2,500,000 |
| National Pension (4.5%) | 112,500 |
| Health + long-term care | ~100,000 |
| Employment insurance (0.9%) | 22,500 |
| Income tax + local (est.) | ~74,500 |
| Net take-home (cash) | ~2,190,000 |
| + Free housing value | ~500,000 |
| Effective compensation | ~2,690,000 |
The headline 2.5M looks modest until you add free housing: the effective package is close to 2.7M KRW, and because rent is the biggest expense in Korea, teachers typically save a large share of their net pay.
Net monthly pay understates a Korean teaching package because so much value sits in non-salary perks: free or subsidized housing, severance pay equal to about one month's salary after a full year, a return flight (and often an arrival flight), and sometimes a settlement allowance or contract-completion bonus. When you compare a Korean offer to a job back home, add these in — they can be worth several million won a year on top of the net cash.
Here is a perk teachers often miss: if your home country has a social-security totalization agreement with Korea (the US, Canada, Australia and several others do), you can usually claim a lump-sum refund of your National Pension contributions — both your share and your employer's — when you permanently leave Korea. For a teacher who paid in for a year or two, that can be a meaningful exit bonus. Citizens of countries without such an agreement generally cannot reclaim it.
At a typical teacher's salary, Korean income tax is gentle. After the earned-income deduction and personal deductions, much of the salary falls in the 6% and 15% brackets, so the effective income-tax rate is usually in the low single digits to low teens. The bigger deductions on your payslip are actually the social-insurance items, not income tax — which is why people are surprised that pension and health, not tax, take the largest bites.
The reason this calculator converts to your home currency is that a number in won is meaningless until you can compare it. Take your effective monthly value (net cash plus housing), convert at the live rate, and weigh it against your home cost of living — remembering that in Korea your rent is often already covered. Many teachers find that a modest-looking won salary supports a higher savings rate than a larger salary at home where rent eats a third of pay. For a deeper offer comparison, see our cost-of-living tool linked below.
If you are American, your Korean teaching income is still reportable to the IRS. You will typically use the Foreign Earned Income Exclusion (Form 2555) or the Foreign Tax Credit to avoid double taxation — and because teaching is employment, not self-employment, you generally do not owe US self-employment tax on it. That is a key difference from freelancers abroad; see our FEIE + SE-tax calculator for the self-employed case.
The social-insurance deductions use 2026 employee rates (about 4.5% pension, ~3.5% health plus the long-term-care add-on, ~0.9% employment insurance) and are close to your real payslip. The income-tax figure is a simplified monthly estimate based on annualized pay after a typical deduction; your exact tax depends on your personal deductions and is trued-up in the year-end settlement. Use the net figure as a reliable planning number and confirm specifics on your first payslip.
From a typical first-year gross of 2.1 to 2.7 million KRW per month, Korea deducts National Pension (about 4.5%), National Health Insurance (about 3.5% plus long-term care), employment insurance (about 0.9%), and modest income tax. Net take-home is usually around 88-92% of gross, and most contracts add free housing on top, so the effective package is higher than the net cash.
Four mandatory items: National Pension (around 4.5% employee share), National Health Insurance with a long-term-care add-on (around 3.5%), employment insurance (around 0.9%), and income tax (progressive national tax plus a 10% local surtax). At a teacher's salary the social-insurance items are larger than the income tax.
Usually yes. Most EPIK and hagwon contracts provide a furnished apartment for free or a housing allowance. Because rent is the biggest cost of living in Korea, free housing dramatically raises your effective compensation and savings rate, which is why this calculator adds an estimated housing value to your net pay.
If your home country has a social-security totalization agreement with Korea (such as the US, Canada, or Australia), you can usually claim a lump-sum refund of your National Pension contributions, including the employer's share, when you permanently leave. Citizens of countries without such an agreement generally cannot reclaim it.
EPIK (public schools) uses standardized pay scales with a settlement allowance and more vacation; hagwons (private academies) vary more, sometimes paying a little higher to offset fewer holidays. Both provide housing and statutory severance, and the legal deductions are identical; the differences are in gross pay, vacation, and exact housing terms.
No. Teaching under a contract is employment, not self-employment, so US teachers generally do not owe the 15.3% US self-employment tax on it. They still report the income to the IRS and typically use the Foreign Earned Income Exclusion or Foreign Tax Credit to avoid double taxation.
Because housing, the largest expense in Korea, is usually provided free, a teacher's net cash is mostly disposable. After converting the effective value (net pay plus housing) to your home currency, many teachers find they save a larger share than they would on a higher salary at home where rent consumes a third of pay.