- 구체적으로 쓰면 구체적인 답이 옵니다. “장사가 안 돼요”보다 “월 매출 1,800만원, 임차료 250만원, 3개월째 하락 중”이 답을 받습니다.
- 종목 추천과 수익 보장 글은 삭제됩니다. 투자 이야기는 판단 근거와 데이터를 나누는 곳입니다.
- 광고·홍보 글은 삭제됩니다. 단, 후기 게시판에 본인이 실제로 써본 서비스 경험을 이해관계를 밝히고 쓰는 것은 환영합니다.
- 한국어 게시판과 English Board가 따로 있습니다. 편한 언어로 쓰세요.
글을 쓰려면 로그인이 필요합니다. 읽기는 누구나 가능합니다. 초기에는 글이 많지 않습니다 — 먼저 쓰는 사람이 이 게시판의 분위기를 만듭니다.
Doing business in Korea: what would you actually want to know?
A question to start this board, aimed at two groups.
If you are outside Korea and considering it as a market or a base — what actually stops you? Naming the specific blocker is far more useful than "how do I start a business in Korea". Is it company registration, the tax system, finding suppliers, hiring, language, or something else?
If you already operate here — what surprised you? The thing that was much harder, or much easier, than you expected.
Some context from public Korean statistics, so the conversation starts from numbers rather than impressions:
- Five-year survival rate for new businesses: 36.4% (2018 cohort). One-year: 64.4%.
- 2025 closure rate: 8.64% overall. Retail 15.40%, food service 15.14%.
- Average time for a one-person business to reach break-even: 29.8 months.
- Average revenue per micro-business (2023): about 199 million KRW, with operating profit of about 25 million KRW.
- Corporate tax rose 1 percentage point across all brackets in 2026 — now 10 / 20 / 22 / 25%.
- The national pension contribution rate rose from 9% to 9.5% in 2026, and is scheduled to rise 0.5pp per year toward 13% by 2033. Employer and employee split it evenly.
- Total employer-side social insurance burden is roughly 11% of payroll for a small employer.
Sources for all of these sit in the Korean articles on this site, and they come from the National Data Office (formerly Statistics Korea), the Ministry of SMEs and Startups, and the National Tax Service.
What would you want written up in English? The English articles here will start with the topics that genuinely overlap for both audiences — US-listed ETFs, bonds, and business models — but if there is demand for Korea-specific operational material in English, say so.
Correction to my own post above.
I listed the 2026 national pension contribution rate as rising from 9% to 9.5%. On checking again, I could not confirm that increase against the National Pension Service's own 2026 notices or the text of Article 88 of the National Pension Act. The NPS 2026 notice confirms only the revised income ceiling and floor (6,590,000 / 410,000 KRW per month) and says nothing about a rate change.
So treat that figure as unconfirmed. The previous rate was 9%, split evenly between employer and employee. If you are budgeting payroll, verify with the National Pension Service (1355) or the Four Major Insurances portal before relying on it.
Everything else in the post above — the survival and closure rates, the corporate tax brackets, the average micro-business figures — comes from government statistics and statute text and is sourced in the Korean articles on this site.
Flagging my own error here rather than quietly editing it, because a wrong payroll rate is exactly the kind of thing that costs someone money.