South Korea Public Holidays 2027: Dates and Substitute Days

Open a 2027 Korean calendar to June and there's a red 6 sitting on a Sunday, with nothing red after it. That's Memorial Day, the only holiday next year that falls on a weekend and gets no substitute at all. Seven others land on a Saturday or Sunday and get pushed to a weekday instead. Two of those seven weren't public holidays in recent years: Labor Day had never been on the government list, and Constitution Day had been off it since 2008.

All of that affects when annual leave goes furthest and which weekends the trains fill up. The dates below come from the Korea AeroSpace Administration's 2027 calendar almanac (월력요항), published June 29, 2026, and so are the holiday counts and long-weekend figures further down. The rules come from the Regulation on Holidays of Government Offices as amended in April 2026. I checked both on October 25, 2026.

The full list of 2027 public holidays

KASA counts 76 holidays in 2027 once Sundays are included. Four of them fall on a Sunday anyway (Seollal day on February 7, Memorial Day on June 6, Liberation Day on August 15 and National Foundation Day on October 3), so the real total is 72. For someone on a five-day week, KASA puts total days off at 119, Saturdays included.

There's no election-day holiday in 2027 either. Election days for term-end elections are on the list, but none falls next year. The regulation also lets the government declare extra days off "from time to time," and as of October 25, 2026 I found no temporary holiday announced for 2027. Those can appear at short notice, so check again before you lock in plans.

Korea substitute holidays 2027: which days move

Article 3 of the regulation sorts holidays into three groups, and the group determines whether a weekend clash produces a substitute day.

The first group moves for a Saturday or a Sunday. It covers the five national days (Independence Movement Day, Constitution Day, Liberation Day, National Foundation Day and Hangeul Day) plus Buddha's Birthday, Labor Day, Children's Day and Christmas. If one of them hits a weekend, the substitute is "the first non-holiday" after it. That's why Saturday, October 9 becomes Monday, October 11.

The second group is Seollal and Chuseok, each a three-day block. These move when one of the days lands on a Sunday, or when one overlaps another public holiday. A Saturday clash doesn't count.

The third group appears in none of Article 3's triggers. New Year's Day, Memorial Day and election days get no substitute, whatever day they fall on.

Seollal 2027 shows how the second rule works. The block runs Saturday, February 6 to Monday, February 8. The Saturday clash alone wouldn't earn anything. But February 7, Seollal day itself, is a Sunday, and that triggers Tuesday, February 9 as the substitute. That makes it a four-day break, the longest official one of the year.

Memorial Day is the third rule. June 6, 2027 is a Sunday, and Monday, June 7 is an ordinary working day. If your calendar app or a blog shows that Monday in red, it's wrong by the regulation's own text. Check this before you book a Monday flight out on the assumption of a long weekend.

When is Chuseok 2027?

Tuesday, September 14 to Thursday, September 16. Chuseok day itself, the 15th day of the eighth lunar month, is Wednesday, September 15.

The whole block sits midweek, so it never touches a Sunday and gets no substitute day. That leaves three days off, with a Monday and a Friday stranded on either side.

Those two stranded days are where annual leave stretches furthest. Take Friday, September 17 off and you're out from Tuesday the 14th through Sunday the 19th. Take Monday the 13th as well and it runs from Saturday the 11th to Sunday the 19th: nine days for two days of leave. If your workplace approves leave in the order it's requested, put yours in early. How many leave days you actually have depends on your contract and years served, which the annual leave guide walks through.

October has a similar gap you can bridge with leave. National Foundation Day gives you Saturday, October 2 through Monday, October 4, and Hangeul Day gives you Saturday the 9th through Monday the 11th. The four days in between, Tuesday the 5th to Friday the 8th, are all that separate the two. Four days of leave bridges them into ten straight days off.

What changed in 2026: Labor Day and Constitution Day

Two dates joined the official list in 2026 through Presidential Decree No. 36290, promulgated April 30, 2026. Under its addenda, Labor Day (May 1) became a public holiday from May 1, 2026, and Constitution Day (July 17) from May 11, 2026.

Constitution Day has long been one of Korea's national days. It was a day off until 2007; the change is that it is one again. And because both new holidays went into the Saturday-or-Sunday group, 2027 feels the effect straight away: May 1 and July 17 are both Saturdays, so they produce Monday, May 3 and Monday, July 19.

Holiday guides written before mid-2026 won't list either day, and won't show the substitutes they create.

Is Labor Day a public holiday in Korea?

Yes. It gets there through two separate routes, one for government offices and one for employees.

For government offices, Labor Day is now item 6 on the list in Article 2 of the holiday regulation. For employees in private companies, there's a separate law, the Act on the Designation of Labor Day (Act No. 21134, November 11, 2025). Its core line is short: "May 1 shall be Labor Day, and this day shall be a paid holiday under the Labor Standards Act." You can read it on law.go.kr.

Public holidays, Labor Day included, also reach private employees through the Labor Standards Act. Article 55(2) of the Labor Standards Act and Article 30(2) of its enforcement decree make the holidays in Article 2 of the government regulation (minus plain Sundays) paid days off, and substitute holidays too. So Tuesday, February 9 or Monday, October 11 is a paid day off at a covered workplace, same as the holiday itself.

Coverage depends on workplace size. The Act generally applies to workplaces with five or more employees (Article 11(1)), and for firms with 5 to 29 people the paid public holiday rule has applied since January 1, 2022. For workplaces with four or fewer, Annex 1 of the enforcement decree applies only Article 55(1), the weekly paid day off, and not the public holiday rule. So a three-person café or a tiny startup isn't required by that rule to give you Chuseok off with holiday pay; your contract may still say otherwise, and MOEL or the 1350 labor helpline can confirm your case.

Labor Day is less clear-cut for those small workplaces, because it also has its own law. I couldn't find a Ministry of Employment and Labor interpretation on whether it reaches four-or-fewer workplaces. If that's you, ask your employer in writing, and double-check with the Ministry of Employment and Labor.

Ten long weekends, and what they mean for a trip

KASA counts ten breaks of three days or more in 2027:

• Jan 1–3 and Feb 6–9 (Seollal, four days)
• Feb 27–Mar 1, May 1–3, Jul 17–19 and Aug 14–16
• Sep 14–16 (Chuseok), Oct 2–4, Oct 9–11 and Dec 25–27

Most are Saturday-to-Monday. For a visitor, that's the useful part: those Mondays are when locals travel too. Expect domestic flights, KTX seats and beach or mountain hotels to be in demand across those three-day stretches, and book anything outside Seoul earlier than you normally would. If a booking falls through and you end up rebooking a train, the KTX refund guide covers what cancelling costs.

Seollal and Chuseok work differently. These are family holidays, and a lot of people leave the big cities to spend them with relatives. The first and last days of each block are the ones to avoid for intercity travel if you can. In the city itself, don't assume a given restaurant or shop is open on the day itself; small family-run places in particular may shut for part of the break. Palaces, museums and markets each set their own holiday hours, and I haven't seen 2027 schedules yet, so check each venue's own notice closer to the date rather than trusting an old list.

If you're still choosing when to come, February and September put you inside the two biggest holidays of the year, with the travel crowds and closures described above. The best time to visit Korea guide compares the seasons more broadly.

What's fixed for 2027 and what can still change

Every date in the table comes from KASA's 2027 almanac, and the substitute rules come from Article 3 of the regulation as amended April 30, 2026. I checked both on October 25, 2026.

Two things can still shift. The government can declare a one-off temporary holiday at short notice, and each venue sets its own opening hours over Seollal and Chuseok. If you work at a very small company, ask your employer well ahead of May 1 whether Labor Day will be a paid day off for you.