Child Support: How Amounts Are Set

Child support in Korea is less of a negotiation than foreign parents expect. The starting number comes off a table the courts publish, the duty belongs to both parents whatever happened between them, and the enforcement system — rebuilt over recent years — now reaches salaries, driver’s licenses, and airport gates. Knowing how the machine works matters on both sides of it: the parent entitled to support, and the parent paying it.

The legal spine is short. Support terms are part of the mandatory child arrangements on divorce (Civil Act art. 837 — see the divorce guide), the family court sets or changes them when parents cannot agree, and the Family Litigation Act plus a dedicated enforcement-support law supply the teeth. This guide walks the amount, the changes, the enforcement ladder, and the cross-border cases.

1. The duty — and how long it runs

Child support is the child’s claim, carried by whichever parent raises them. It does not depend on marriage — parents never married to each other owe it too — and it does not depend on contact: a parent barred from visitation still pays, and a parent behind on payments still visits. The two systems deliberately do not trade against each other.

The default duty runs until the child reaches majority at 19. Parents can agree to carry costs beyond that — university is the common case — and such agreements are enforceable like the rest of the support terms; without one, adult children’s costs are a voluntary matter.

One prerequisite trips up unmarried parents: the duty attaches to legal parents. Where the father was never married to the mother and never formally acknowledged the child, legal paternity — by acknowledgment (inji) (인지) or a court finding — comes first, and support flows from it. For international couples this step is worth handling early, while evidence and cooperation are still easy to come by.

2. The guidelines table: how amounts are computed

Korean courts work from the child support guidelines table (양육비 산정기준표) published by the Seoul Family Court and used nationwide. The mechanism has three steps:

1. 1

   Add both parents’ gross incomes

   Pre-tax, and broad: salary, business and rental income, interest, pensions, government benefits.
2. 2

   Read the standard amount off the table

   The combined-income band and the child’s age bracket give a standard per-child monthly figure — under the 2021 table (in effect since March 2022), ranging from roughly ₩620,000 to ₩2,880,000.
3. 3

   Split it by income ratio

   Each parent bears the standard amount in proportion to their income; the paying parent transfers their share to the custodial parent.

The table’s standard amounts price an ordinary childhood at each age — housing, food, schooling — which is why documented incomes, not impressions, drive the number.

The table is a starting point, not a straitjacket: courts adjust for the number of children, unusual education or medical costs, housing, and the parents’ real circumstances. But it anchors every negotiation — which is why the productive argument is rarely “what feels fair” and usually “what are the incomes, documented.”

3. Changing the number later

Support orders are living documents. Job loss, a raise, a child’s new school or medical needs, a custody change — any real shift in circumstances supports asking the family court to adjust the amount, up or down. What does not work is silently paying less: the order stands until changed, and the shortfall accumulates as enforceable arrears.

The past is not automatically lost either: support for periods already elapsed can be claimed in practice, though courts weigh how the costs were actually borne and delay makes the accounting harder. The working rule in both directions is the same — deal with changes through the court promptly, not through unilateral arithmetic.

4. When payments stop: the enforcement ladder

• Salary at the source.After two or more missed periodic payments, the family court can order the payer’s employer to deduct the support from wages and send it directly to you (Family Litigation Act art. 63-2). For salaried payers this is the single most effective tool. Security deposits and lump-sum orders exist for payers without steady wages (art. 63-3).
• Compliance order. The court orders performance of the duty (art. 64); defying it without just cause brings a fine of up to ₩10,000,000 (art. 67) and, on the statutory conditions, detention of up to 30 days (art. 68).
• Administrative sanctions.For debtors who still refuse after the court stage: driver’s-license suspension (100 days), exit bans (6-month units), and public disclosure of name and arrears (3 years) under the enforcement-support law.
• Criminal punishment.A debtor who, after a detention order, still fails to pay within a year faces up to 1 year’s imprisonment or a ₩10,000,000 fine.

5. Cross-border support

International families meet two versions of the problem. When the paying parent leaves Korea, a Korean order must be enforced through the other country’s recognition rules — possible in many places, but slower and country-dependent. The practical countermeasures live at order time, not collection time: security deposits or a lump-sum structure where flight is a real risk (art. 63-3), and an exit-ban petition while arrears mount.

In the mirror case — a foreign support order against a parent in Korea — the order travels through the recognition framework covered in Which Country’s Court?, after which Korean enforcement applies. Where the child now lives in Korea, setting support afresh in the Korean courts is often the cleaner route. Either way, document the incomes early; distance makes evidence expensive.

6. Common mistakes

• Cash without records.Informal envelopes and “I’ll send what I can” leave both sides unprotected — the payer cannot prove payment, the recipient cannot prove arrears. Fixed amounts, fixed dates, bank transfers.
• Vague agreements at the divorce.“He’ll help with the kids’ costs” is not an order. Use the table, name the number, and get it into the court-confirmed paperwork — the enforcement ladder only grips documents.
• Trading contact against money. Withholding visitation over unpaid support — or support over blocked visitation — hurts the child and your own case; each problem has its own remedy (see the custody guide).
• Quietly adjusting the amount yourself after an income change, instead of applying to change the order.
• Waiting years to enforce. Arrears grow, but memories, employers, and assets move. The ladder works best started at the second missed payment, not the twentieth.

Start with three documents: both parents’ income evidence, the child’s recurring cost list, and — if an order already exists — the payment record to date. The table, the court, and the agency all run on exactly those.

Frequently asked questions

This completes the money-and-children side of the divorce cluster — the process itself lives in Divorce in Korea: Consensual vs. Judicial, and the property side in Property Division Basics.

Written by Attorney Chulho Choi (SOL & LUNA / Law Firm Myeong, KBA-registered specialist in Civil and Criminal Law). Reviewed as of August 2026. Updated when laws change.