The Vietnam Korea Social Insurance agreement: what it changes for Korean employees

Updated September 2026. The Vietnam Korea Social Insurance agreement is the only bilateral Social Insurance treaty Vietnam has in force, and it has been applied since 1 January 2024. For Korean nationals working in Vietnam it does two things: it removes the obligation to contribute twice, and it allows periods in both countries to be added together when a pension is assessed. The second of those creates a decision that the one-time payment closes off permanently. This guide from terra sets out how each mechanism works and who should think hard before claiming.

What the Vietnam Korea Social Insurance agreement does

The Vietnam Korea Social Insurance agreement does two things, and they operate on different timescales. The first is an exemption: a worker sent from one country to the other can remain in the home country’s scheme instead of paying into both, applied from 1 January 2024. The second is aggregation, the mechanism most pension systems call totalization: periods contributed in Vietnam and in Korea can be added together to assess entitlement to a pension, which follows the framework of the Law on Social Insurance 2024 in force from 1 July 2025.

The legal hook inside Vietnamese law is easy to miss. Article 2 of the Law on Social Insurance 2024 makes foreign nationals with a labor contract of 12 months or more subject to compulsory Social Insurance, except where an international treaty Vietnam is party to provides otherwise. That exception is what the agreement occupies, and it is why a seconded Korean employee can sit outside the Vietnamese scheme while a directly hired one does not.

Implementation runs through an administrative arrangement signed in December 2023, with the Vietnamese authority issuing its own guidance on certificates and contribution cessation in Official Document No. 862/BHXH-TST dated 29 April 2024. The practical consequence for payroll is that the exemption is document-driven: without the certificate in hand, the default position is that contributions are due.

How does the certificate of coverage work?

The home country’s authority issues a certificate confirming that the worker remains covered under its scheme, and the host country’s authority accepts it as the basis for stopping the local contribution. For a Korean employee seconded to Vietnam, that means the Korean side issues and the Vietnamese employer relies on it.

Three things follow, and payroll teams get all three wrong at some point. The exemption starts when the certificate applies, not when the secondment starts, so a gap at the beginning of an assignment is a period of ordinary Vietnamese liability. The certificate has a validity period, and an assignment that outlasts it does not extend itself. And the exemption belongs to the individual and the assignment, so it does not carry across to a new local contract signed later with the same company.

The stance worth taking, and some mobility teams will find it inconvenient: treat the certificate as a payroll control, not as a filing formality. It is the only document standing between the company and an arrears position, and arrears in Vietnam carry 0.03% per day on the outstanding amount under Article 40 of the Law on Social Insurance 2024.

Who is covered and who is not

Nationality alone does not decide it. What decides it is whether you were sent from one system to the other and hold the document that says so.

The fourth row is the one that causes arguments, because two exemptions can apply to the same person for different reasons and only one of them is the treaty. The distinction matters at exit: an intra-company transferee has no Vietnamese record either way, while a locally hired Korean employee does. Where the twelve month line sits in general is covered in the guide to short-term contracts, transferees and directors.

Should a Korean employee claim the one-time payment?

It depends on one number: how close your combined record is to a pension threshold, and how much the Vietnamese period contributes to closing that gap. Where the Vietnamese period is short and the Korean record is already sufficient, aggregation adds little and taking the money makes sense. Where you are short of a threshold and the Vietnamese years would bridge it, the one-time payment is an expensive way to get cash.

The asymmetry is what should drive the decision. Not claiming is reversible, and the period sits on your Social Insurance number until you decide otherwise. Claiming is not reversible, and no procedure restores a period that has been paid out. Anyone who tells you the choice is obvious in either direction has not looked at both records.

This is also the point where terra states a boundary rather than an opinion. The Korean side of the assessment is governed by Korean rules and administered by the Korean authority, and terra does not advise on it. What terra can establish is the Vietnamese half: what is on the record, what the period is worth as a lump sum today, and what the exit procedure requires. The Korean half belongs to the Korean pension authority, and the decision should not be made on half the picture. If you do decide to claim, what that involves is set out in the guide to one-time Social Insurance for foreign employees, and the trade-off itself in what happens if you never claim.

What employers of Korean staff should check

Four checks, and they take an afternoon across a whole headcount. Most Korean-invested companies in Vietnam have a mixed population of secondees and local hires, and the treaty applies cleanly to only one of those groups.

1. Which employees are seconded and which are locally hired. The payroll consequence differs and the exit consequence differs more.
2. Whether a certificate of coverage exists for every secondee, and when it expires. An expired certificate is an arrears position accruing daily, not a paperwork gap.
3. Whether contributions were stopped from the right month. Stopping early is a liability, stopping late is a reconciliation.
4. What each locally hired Korean employee will be told at exit. They have a claimable record, and the aggregation trade-off should be explained before they resign, not after.

The fourth is the one companies skip, and it is the one employees remember. An employee who claims a lump sum and later discovers it cost them a pension threshold will not blame the treaty.

What to do next

If you are a Korean employee leaving Vietnam, establish both halves before you decide: what the Vietnamese record holds and what the Korean authority would do with it if the periods were added together. The Vietnam Korea Social Insurance agreement gives you an option nobody else working here has, and the one-time payment is the one way to give that option up permanently.

If you are an employer, run the four checks above this quarter rather than at the next inspection. Nothing in the Vietnam Korea Social Insurance agreement obliges a company to explain the trade-off to departing staff, and doing it anyway is the cheapest goodwill available to a Korean-invested employer in this country. For the wider set of 2026 changes, see the Social Insurance changes for foreign employees in Vietnam.