Korean Public Holidays

Four. Thursday 24 September (the eve), Friday the 25th (Chuseok) and Saturday the 26th are the statutory holiday, and the 27th is a Sunday — Thursday to Sunday on a five-day week.

No. For Seollal and Chuseok a substitute day arises only when one of the three holiday days falls on a Sunday or on another public holiday. In 2026 the break ends on a Saturday and none of the three is a Sunday, so there is no substitute. The only way the 28th becomes a day off is a one-off government designation, and until that happens it is a working day.

Only once designated. The Cabinet decides them case by case, so they cannot be known in advance, and adding one early would invent a holiday. The ones designated so far are here: 1 October 2024 (Armed Forces Day), 27 January 2025 (Seollal) and 3 June 2025 (the presidential election). In 2026 neither 4 May nor 28 September was designated, so both are working days. A new one is added when it is designated.

Three kinds. Fixed solar dates: New Year’s Day (1 Jan), Independence Movement Day (1 Mar), Labor Day (1 May), Children’s Day (5 May), Memorial Day (6 Jun), Constitution Day (17 Jul), Liberation Day (15 Aug), National Foundation Day (3 Oct), Hangeul Day (9 Oct) and Christmas (25 Dec). Labor Day and Constitution Day are public holidays from 2026, so they do not appear in 2024 or 2025. Lunar dates, which move every year: Seollal with the day before and after (lunar 1/1 ± 1), Chuseok with the day before and after (lunar 8/15 ± 1), and Buddha’s Birthday (lunar 4/8). The lunar dates are computed from the same KASI-based table used by the lunar converter on this site. And days set per occasion: the polling days of presidential, National Assembly and local elections held because a term ends, and temporary holidays the government has designated.

By three rules. Independence Movement Day, Buddha’s Birthday, Labor Day, Children’s Day, Constitution Day, Liberation Day, National Foundation Day, Hangeul Day and Christmas get a substitute when they fall on a Saturday or Sunday, or on a weekday that is already another holiday. The Seollal and Chuseok runs get a single substitute when the three-day run contains a Sunday or overlaps another holiday; a Saturday alone does not count. New Year’s Day, Memorial Day, election days and temporary holidays get no substitute at all. The substitute is placed on the next weekday that is neither a weekend nor already a holiday, so two holidays can never claim the same replacement day. In 2027 Labor Day and Constitution Day both fall on a Saturday, so Monday 3 May and Monday 19 July are substitute holidays.

2024 through 2049. The substitute-holiday rules were extended in stages over recent years, so applying today’s rules to older years would produce dates that were not actually days off. Rather than mixing several historical rule sets, the calendar starts where the current rules apply throughout. Labor Day and Constitution Day are added from 2026, the year they became public holidays.

Yes, from 2026. The regulation was amended on 30 April 2026: Labor Day (formerly Workers’ Day) became a public holiday from 1 May, and Constitution Day, dropped in 2008, returned from 11 May. Both take a substitute day under the same rule as the other national holidays — in 2027 they fall on Saturdays, so Monday 3 May and Monday 19 July are off instead. Neither appears in 2024 or 2025.

Yes, when the election is held because a term ends — presidential, National Assembly and nationwide local elections. The regulation lists those polling days as public holidays, and the Public Official Election Act fixes the date: the first Wednesday on or after 70, 50 or 30 days before the term ends, moved a week later if that day or the day either side is a public holiday. That makes them computable, so they are included: 3 June 2026 (local), 12 April 2028 (National Assembly), and in 2030 both 27 March (presidential) and 12 June (local — 5 June is the day before Memorial Day). An election held early, like the presidential election of 3 June 2025, is a day off only when the government designates it as a temporary holiday. By-elections are not holidays.

Yes. Public holidays and the substitute rules are set by regulation, and a change to that regulation changes the answer for future years. The dates shown here reflect the rules in force at the time of writing; for years far in the future, treat them as the expected result of today’s rules rather than a guarantee. Future election days assume today’s terms run their course — an early presidential election would move every later one.

They overlap now, but they started as different things. The list here comes from the regulation on public holidays for government offices (관공서의 공휴일에 관한 규정), which originally bound only the public sector. Private employers were brought under it in stages — companies with 300 or more employees from 2020, 30 to 299 from 2021, and 5 to 29 from 2022 — so for workplaces of five or more these are now statutory paid holidays under the Labor Standards Act. Separately, every employee who works a full week also earns a weekly paid rest day (주휴일), which is usually Sunday and is not part of this calendar.

Because the fixed-date holidays drift across the week. In a year where Independence Movement Day, Liberation Day and Christmas all land midweek, each one is a clean day off. In a year where several fall on a Saturday, some produce a substitute and some do not, depending on the per-holiday rule. New Year’s Day and Memorial Day never generate a substitute, so a year that puts both on a weekend simply loses them. An election year has one more day off. Comparing two years side by side in this calendar shows the swing clearly — it is normally two to three days.

Roughly, but not exactly. Seollal is lunar 1/1, which lands somewhere between late January and mid-February on the solar calendar. Chuseok is lunar 8/15, which falls between early September and early October. The lunar year is about eleven days shorter than the solar year, so each holiday drifts earlier until a leap month is inserted and it jumps back. That is why Chuseok can be in early September one year and late September the next.

The calendar follows the regulation exactly rather than common practice. Buddha’s Birthday (lunar 4/8) is a designated public holiday and appears with a substitute rule. Christmas Eve and New Year’s Eve are not public holidays in Korea, however widely they are treated as occasions, so they are absent. The day before and after Seollal and Chuseok are included only because the regulation names them individually, not because they are eves in a general sense.

No. School vacation periods are set by each school under the education office calendar, and company shutdowns — including the common practice of closing between Christmas and New Year — are decided by each employer. Neither follows a national rule that can be computed, so both are outside what this calendar can tell you. What it gives you is the statutory floor that applies everywhere.

Your own device clock. Korean holidays are defined by the Korean calendar date, so if you are viewing from a time zone that is behind Korea, your today and Seoul today can briefly differ. When the answer matters for something happening in Korea, check the date shown in the list rather than relying on the today banner alone.