Parental leave pay at 100% has a ceiling — why a ₩3M and a ₩5M salary both get exactly ₩23.1M for the year

A worker on ₩3M a month takes a year of parental leave. The pay landing in the bank adds up to ₩23.1M. A worker on ₩5M a month also takes a year. The total is exactly the same ₩23.1M. A ₩2M gap in salary and not one won of difference in leave pay. It is true that parental leave pays 100% of wages. But above that sits a ceiling, and the height of the ceiling steps down with each stage of the leave.

Parental leave is open to workers raising a child aged 8 or under, or in second grade or below, and the pay comes not from the employer but from employment insurance. To qualify you need 180 or more days of coverage, combined, before the leave starts. The months before leave are when there is the most to find out and the least time to find it, so most people only check the pay calculation when the first deposit lands. Today's aim is to reverse that order and write the year's household budget before the leave request goes in.

Pay is divided into three bands by how many months into the leave you are. The first three months pay 100% of ordinary wages, capped at ₩2.5M. Months four to six also pay 100%, but the cap drops to ₩2M. From month seven the rate is 80% of ordinary wages with a cap of ₩1.6M. Every band has a floor of ₩700K. The ordinary wage used is frozen at its level on the day the leave starts. If the company raises pay during your leave, the calculation still uses the start-date figure. The bands carry over when leave is split: take three months, return, and take more later, and the second spell starts in the month-four band, because your place on the ladder is set by the total taken. Partial months are prorated by days.

Follow the ₩3M worker through the year. The first three months would be ₩3M at 100%, but the cap holds it to ₩2.5M a month. The next three months are capped at ₩2M. From month seven, 80% works out to ₩2.4M but the ₩1.6M cap applies. Add up ₩7.5M, ₩6M and ₩9.6M, and the year comes to ₩23.1M. The ₩5M worker hits the same cap in every band and gets the same amount. Anyone whose ordinary wage exceeds ₩2.5M collects ₩23.1M for the year; nobody separates here. A ₩2M worker is different: the first six months clear the caps and pay the full ₩2M, and from month seven 80% gives ₩1.6M. The year totals ₩21.6M, only ₩2.4M short of a ₩24M annual salary. The ceiling ladder hurts more the higher your pay, and behaves closer to a true 100% the lower it is.

Search for parental leave and you still find plenty of articles saying 25% of the pay is held back until you have been back at work for six months. That was the deferred payment: part paid during leave, the rest lumped together six months after returning. It has been abolished. Its legal basis, Decree Article 95 paragraph 4, was deleted by an amendment of 24 December 2024 that took effect on 1 January 2025. Leave periods before 1 January 2025 are still paid under the old rule, per the addenda. Today the monthly pay is paid in full during the leave, with no portion tied to returning. Old information breaks plans. Read a deferred-era article and budget your leave income too low and the household books go wrong; wait for a lump sum after returning and you wait for money that never comes. The rules change but the search results stay. Do not put undated information into a plan.

When both parents take leave for the same child, two things change. One is pay. If both parents take leave within 18 months of the birth, the ceiling for the first six months rises under a special rule: ₩2.5M each in months one and two, ₩3M in month three, up to ₩4.5M each in month six. But each rung is reached only if each parent has taken that many months. If both take just three months, it stops at month three's ₩3M. This is the special usually called 6+6. The first half-year taken together sits in a different world from the ₩2.5M ceiling of leave taken alone. The other is duration. Parental leave is normally one year, but when each parent has taken three months or more, six more months are available, making eighteen. Single parents and parents of a child with a disability get the same extension. A single parent's pay ceiling also differs: ₩3M rather than ₩2.5M for months one to three. Whether the father takes even three months is the key to both the pay special and the extension.

Pay does not arrive on its own. The claim window opens one month after the leave starts and closes twelve months after it ends. Claim any time within twelve months after the leave ends and you still receive it all, even in a lump; a year after the leave ends, the window shuts. You can claim monthly or in a lump, but either way the final limit is twelve months after the end. Claims go to the employment center, and online works too. Any employment with another company during the leave must be declared on the claim; hiding it is benefit fraud. And before the leave starts, confirm your ordinary wage with the company, because that one figure is the base of the whole three-band calculation.

Two things to do now. First, confirm your ordinary wage, run it through the three bands, and build a twelve-month table. Second, if your spouse can take leave too, calculate a split plan and a one-parent-long plan side by side. Today's story covers the skeleton of the pay only. What counts as ordinary wages, any separate allowance from the company, and occupations on different rules such as civil servants and teachers need separate checking, so ask the employment center and your HR team. The word 100% is not wrong. It only becomes a plan once you have heard the height of the ceiling.