Ask any group of foreign workers in Korea and the same question comes up: "Is there a job where they give you a room and food?" There is, and there are more of them than most people think. They are just not in the places where most people live.

This guide is about those jobs. Work at a site outside the big cities where you stay for a month or more, sleep in accommodation the site provides, eat there, and get paid a day rate for each day you work. In Korean these are called 상주 (sangju, "staying on site") jobs. We cover who can legally take them by visa, the checks to make before you get on the bus, how the money actually adds up, and where the real risks are. It is written for people already living in Korea on an F-2, F-4, F-5 or F-6 visa, and for G-1 humanitarian stay holders with a work permit.

Why a rural site gives you a room at all

Nobody provides housing out of generosity. A site provides a room because there are no workers within commuting distance. If a factory or a construction project sat next to a city, it would hire locals who go home at night. Accommodation is a signal that the site is somewhere remote and cannot fill its shifts from the surrounding area.

That has a practical consequence. These jobs are meant for someone who lives in Incheon or Ansan and travels to Gyeongbuk or Jeonnam for a couple of months. If you are waiting for one to appear in your own neighbourhood, it will not, because a site near you has no reason to offer a bed.

What "live-in" actually means on paper

Here is the part that surprises people. A live-in job is usually not a salaried position. On paper it is day labor (일용직): a contract that forms each day you work and ends the same day. In practice you go to the same site every working day for one to several months, often six days a week. Your life is settled in one place; your contract renews every morning.

Why does that matter? Because your income is the day rate multiplied by the days you actually worked. On a rainy day when the site stops, on a day the materials do not arrive, on a public holiday, there is no pay. So the honest question is never "how much per month" but "what is the day rate, and how many days does this site actually run in a month?"

The paperwork is light. Typically one written contract and an attendance sheet (출역일보) that records each day you worked. You do not sign a new contract every morning, but the day-by-day nature is real and it shapes everything below.

Who can take a live-in site job

This is the section to read twice. The same F visa can split by sub-code, and G-1 changes completely depending on which G-1 you hold.

Visa	Live-in site work	What to check
F-2 Residence	Yes	F-2-R (regional) holders may only work inside the city or county that issued the permit. A site elsewhere is a violation
F-5 Permanent Residence	Yes	Same terms as a Korean worker
F-6 Marriage Migrant	Yes	Same terms as a Korean worker
F-4 Overseas Korean	Yes, with job checks	Basic construction labor and loading were opened in February 2026. Cleaner, waste collector and several others are still restricted
G-1-6 Humanitarian Stay	Yes with a work permit	The permit is issued per workplace. That site must be on the back of your card
H-2 Working Visit (existing holders)	Yes until your stay expires	For construction you also need the construction employment registration and the employer's special employment confirmation
D-2 / D-4 Students	No	Part-time permission covers service jobs only. Construction and manufacturing permits are not issued
D-10, E-7, E-3, F-3	No	Tied to a designated employer, or not permitted to work at all

F-2: stop if your card says F-2-R

Most F-2 holders can work anywhere. F-2-R is the exception. It is the regional specialty visa granted on condition that you settle in a designated population-decline area, and it allows work only inside that city or county. Taking a job at a site two provinces away is a status violation, and it is a trap that does not exist when you work near home. Check the sub-code on your card. Our F-2 sub-code guide lists what each code allows, and the F-2-R guide explains the regional rule in full.

F-4: the allowed and the restricted jobs sit on the same site

Since 12 February 2026, basic construction site labor and loading and unloading work are open to F-4 holders. If someone told you F-4 cannot do construction, that is out of date. But cleaner, waste collector, removals worker, parcel delivery and food delivery remain restricted, and on a real site those jobs sit right next to the allowed ones. Hired as a general laborer but spending the whole day cleaning the site? Hired as demolition support but mainly hauling waste out? Those are restricted roles. "Just for today" is the most dangerous phrase on a site. Do a few days, and if the actual work differs from what you were told, say so then. The consequence lands on your residence status, not on the company. The full list is in the F-4 simple labor guide.

G-1: the permit text is everything

G-1 splits by sub-code first. Humanitarian stay (G-1-6) can apply for a work permit and the approved range includes construction. Refugee applicants (G-1-5) can apply only six months after filing and are not approved for construction or manufacturing. G-1-10 is a medical stay and not a work category at all.

Even as G-1-6, the permit names the workplace, the type of work and the period. Working outside what is written on the back of your card is a violation even with a permit in hand. This is actually why live-in work suits G-1-6 better than day-to-day labor: the permit wants one fixed workplace, and a live-in job is exactly that. The order of operations is site confirmed first, then the permit for that site. Our G-1 work permit guide walks through the application.

H-2: only if you already hold it

H-2 stopped being issued on 12 February 2026. Existing holders can keep working until their stay expires. On a construction site you also need your own construction employment registration (건설업 취업인정증) and the employer's special employment confirmation (특례고용가능확인서). The route forward is F-4. It is not automatic, you apply yourself, and the conversion fee is waived until the end of 2027. See the H-2 to F-4 guide.

Nine checks before you leave

Getting to a rural site and discovering the terms are different costs you at least the bus fare home, and usually more. Go through these nine before you commit.

1. Front and back of your registration card

Front: does your period of stay outlast the job? A two-month site with one month left on your card creates a problem halfway through. Back: if your status requires a permit, this is where the approved workplace, job type and period are written. The back of the card is the final word. The visa code on the front is only the first filter.

2. The construction safety training certificate

Every person entering a construction site in Korea, Korean nationals included and whatever the visa, must have completed the 4-hour basic occupational safety and health training (건설업 기초안전보건교육). Without the certificate you will be stopped at the gate on day one. The employer is supposed to bear the cost, so if you are told to pay for it yourself, question it. You can check your own record through the Construction Safety Pass mobile app or the KOSHA lookup.

My honest advice: get this done before a job comes up. When a live-in position opens, the person who already holds the certificate gets it. The person who still has to attend a class does not.

3. The day rate, and how many hours a day is

A day rate on its own tells you nothing. Divide it by the hours. The 2026 minimum wage is 10,320 won an hour, so the legal floor is 82,560 won for 8 hours, 103,200 for 10 and 123,840 for 12. If the rate divided by the hours comes out under 10,320, look at the job again.

Overtime beyond 8 hours a day is paid at 1.5 times. Night work between 10 pm and 6 am adds 0.5 times on top of the normal wage, because the hour itself is already being paid and only the premium is added. Both premiums apply only at workplaces with 5 or more regular employees. We are deliberately not quoting "typical" day rates here. They vary so much by site, trade and region that a single number becomes a wrong benchmark. The arithmetic above works at any site.

4. When and how you get paid

This is the most common problem on live-in jobs. "All at the end of the month" means waiting up to thirty days. Korean labor law requires wages to be paid at least once a month on a fixed date, so weekly pay is completely legal and many sites will agree to it. Find out before you go whether the site pays weekly or monthly, and make sure the pay date is in the contract. People who do not know their first pay date are the ones who waver in week two.

And under Korean labor law the money is paid by the employer directly to you, into your own account. If a team leader collects everyone's wages and hands them out, or the person who introduced you receives it first, check whose name is on the contract as your employer before you go. Once wages pass through someone else's hands, it is unclear who you claim from on the day they do not arrive.

5. Is the room and food free, or deducted?

"Accommodation and meals provided" hides two very different arrangements: the company pays, or it comes out of your wages. If it is a deduction, four things must be true. First, you gave written consent. Wages are paid in full by default and a deduction is the exception. Second, the amount that can be deducted is capped and the cap differs by type of housing; container and prefab housing carry a much lower cap. Third, what is left after the deduction must still be at or above the minimum wage. Fourth, the item and the amount are written in your employment contract and you receive a copy.

So when you hear "we provide housing", ask: "Free, or deducted from the day rate? If deducted, how much in won?" We are not giving a percentage here because it depends on the housing type, and the local employment centre is the place to confirm it.

6. What happens on days with no work

Rain, waiting for materials, holiday weeks: no work means no day rate. That is the nature of day labor. Ask "how many days a month does this site actually run?" A six-day-a-week site can still come out at twenty-odd working days in a wet month. If housing is deducted, ask whether it is deducted on days you did not work.

7. Are you going in as an individual, or as part of a team?

Many rural sites are staffed by a foreman who brings his own crew. That structure is not illegal in itself. The point is to know which side of it you are on. If your employment contract is with the site company and your wages come from that company into your account, you are an individually placed worker. If the foreman receives the money and pays you, and the foreman is the only person giving you instructions, then it is unclear who your employer is, and that becomes very unclear on the day you are injured or unpaid. Two things settle it: whose name is on the contract, and whose account the wages come from.

8. What happens if you are injured

Industrial accident insurance applies from your first day, regardless of nationality or visa status. It attaches to the workplace, not to a registration the employer filed, so you are covered even if the site never enrolled you. Non-enrolment is the employer's liability, not a gap in your protection. You can file the claim yourself with the Workers' Compensation Service, and the Service does not report you to immigration. If anyone says "this site has no insurance, go to hospital with your own money", the statement itself is wrong. Our industrial accident guide covers the steps.

9. Three phone numbers

Who do you call if the conditions turn out different? Who keeps the attendance sheet? Who do you contact in an emergency? Have those three contacts before you leave, and keep the introducer's number and the site manager's number separately.

The money, honestly

The upside of live-in work is that housing and food cost you nothing or very little, so the day rate stays in your pocket. The downside is the one above: no work, no pay. And when you work every day, the four social insurances attach, so what lands in your account is a little less than rate times days.

Of the four, industrial accident insurance is unconditional. Employment insurance applies to day laborers too, but the unemployment-benefit part differs by visa status, so a payslip without an employment insurance line is not automatically wrong. National pension and health insurance depend on how many days a month you work. Confirm the current threshold with the insurance agency or your local employment centre when the first report is filed, quoting your visa type.

Tax on day labor income is withheld on a per-day basis after a fixed daily allowance and at a low rate, and that is the end of it. There is no year-end settlement. At ordinary day rates very little tax is actually taken. The payslip guide explains each deduction line.

One more thing on construction sites. If the project is covered by the construction workers' retirement mutual aid scheme (건설근로자 퇴직공제), the employer must report your working days, and those days build into a lump sum paid to you later. Whether a site is covered and how much accrues is something the Construction Workers Mutual Aid Association can confirm. On a live-in job those days add up faster than you expect.

If you want to leave early

Let me be straight about this. What a live-in site fears most is a worker leaving halfway through. The person who is valuable on that site is not the fastest worker but the one who stays. Which is exactly why the nine checks above exist. Someone who confirmed the terms before leaving rarely has a reason to quit in week three.

If you do have to leave, say so in advance. Day labor does not bind you to a period, but disappearing without a word costs you that site and the next one. A few days' notice gives the site time to find someone and gives you a route to the next placement.

How MyKoreaWork handles this kind of job

MyKoreaWork is a paid job-placement agency registered under Korea's Employment Security Act. We place people into two kinds of work: day-to-day and short-term jobs, and on-site work where you stay at one site for a month or more, the kind this guide is about. Live-in site work we handle ourselves, anywhere in the country, because a site with a dormitory is by definition somewhere with no local workers, and sending someone from the city is the whole job.

Before we send anyone, we check the expiry date on the front of the registration card and the permit text on the back. Placing someone at a site their status does not allow is prohibited for the agency too, not only for the employer, so this check protects our licence as much as it protects you. We look at the card. We do not keep photos or the number.

Your wages are paid by the site company directly into your account. We never receive them on your behalf. Where an introduction fee applies it stays within the ceiling set under the Employment Security Act, and you are told the amount before you accept the job, not after. The details are on our pricing page. Registering and talking to us costs nothing.

If this kind of work interests you, register here and tell us your visa, the regions you would travel to and how long you can stay. If you want to see first whether your status fits, the eligibility check takes a minute.

Questions we get asked

How much Korean do I need?

Enough to understand safety instructions. On a construction site, not understanding a warning is how you get hurt. Fluency is not required. If a site already has workers from your country, ask about that one first.

Can I bring family?

Most site accommodation is shared rooms, so it varies by site. Ask about the room setup first: how many to a room, and whether men and women are housed separately.

Is there work in winter?

Construction slows in winter and in the monsoon; food factories and seafood processing plants run on different seasons. Ask "which months does this site run?"

What if day-to-day work near home suits me better?

Plenty of people prefer that, and the contract works a little differently. We cover it separately in the day labor guide for F-visa and G-1 holders.

Last word. Do not take a job whose terms are not written down. Housing, meals, pay date, day rate, working hours. Those five in a contract, or at least in a text message, are what you fall back on if the story changes after you arrive.

Live-In Site Jobs in Korea With a Room and Meals Provided — Who Can Go, What to Check Before You Leave, and How Day-Rate Pay Works (2026)