South Korea Public Holidays

South Korea's substitute holiday system (Daetchehyu) grants an extra day off when a major holiday overlaps with a weekend or another holiday, a policy expanded in recent years to cover more of the national holiday list than it originally did — a real, evolving feature of the country's holiday calendar.

South Korea's public holiday calendar combines modern civic anniversaries with traditions tied to the country's Confucian and cultural heritage, and — like several other East Asian countries — treats its two biggest holidays, Seollal (Lunar New Year) and Chuseok (harvest festival), as lunisolar-calendar observances whose dates shift every year, excluded from this page's fixed-date table.

Liberation Day (August 15) commemorates Korea's 1945 liberation from Japanese colonial rule at the end of World War II — the same calendar date, coincidentally, as V-J Day marking the end of the Pacific War.

Hangul Day (October 9) celebrates the 1443 creation of the Korean alphabet under King Sejong the Great, a genuinely unusual example of a public holiday specifically honoring a writing system.

National Foundation Day (Gaecheonjeol, October 3) commemorates the legendary founding of the first Korean kingdom, Gojoseon, in 2333 BC according to traditional dating — a founding narrative treated as a civic and cultural touchstone rather than a claim of literal historical record.

South Korea's Children's Day (May 5) is a full statutory public holiday, a genuine difference from many countries where a similar observance exists only as an unofficial or commercial occasion rather than a day off work and school.

Memorial Day (June 6) honors South Korea's war dead, most prominently from the Korean War, and is observed with a nationwide moment of silence — one of the country's more solemn public holidays alongside Liberation Day.

South Korea's substitute holiday system was significantly expanded in 2021 to cover more of the lunisolar holidays (Seollal and Chuseok) in addition to the fixed-date ones, reflecting continued, active legislative attention to the country's holiday-scheduling rules rather than a system fixed once and left unchanged.

Constitution Day (July 17), commemorating the 1948 promulgation of South Korea's constitution, was removed from the list of paid public holidays in 2008 as part of a broader push to reduce the total number of holidays for economic reasons, even though it's still marked as a national commemorative day without a guaranteed day off — a genuine example of a holiday's status being downgraded rather than only ever expanding.

South Korea distinguishes "national holidays" (gukgyeongil), which mark specific historical anniversaries, from "public holidays" (gonghyuil), the broader legally non-working day category — Constitution Day remains a national holiday in the ceremonial sense even without gonghyuil status, a distinction with a real practical difference in whether it's a paid day off.

South Korea's official holiday list is confirmed annually by the government well ahead of each year specifically because of the lunisolar dates involved, giving employers and schools time to plan around Seollal and Chuseok even though their exact Gregorian dates shift from year to year.

South Korea doesn't have provincial or regional holidays layered on top of the national list the way several other countries on this page do, keeping its calendar structurally uniform nationwide despite the country's real regional cultural diversity expressed in other, non-holiday ways.

Seollal (Lunar New Year) and Chuseok follow the lunisolar calendar and shift every year — treated separately as reference/awareness dates.

Source: South Korean government public holiday list, as of 2026-07-12.