On the 25th of every month, my credit card statement lands. Last month I caught myself staring at the total, thinking, “Where did all of this even go?” So instead of shrugging it off like usual, I opened my banking app and broke it down, line by line — me, my wife, and our seven-year-old daughter. Three people, one month, and where the money actually goes. Not an average. Our real receipt.
The cost of living in Korea is something I usually wave off with a vague “it depends.” But since I had it all written down anyway, I’ll share the numbers as they are. If you’ve ever searched for it, you’ve probably seen the usual estimates — so let me also explain why those tend to miss the mark for a real family.
phone banking app showing monthly cost of living in Korea for a familyWhy the numbers everyone quotes are useless
Search “cost of living in Korea” in English and the results all look about the same: “Family of four, ₩5.2M–5.5M per month, rent excluded.” “Single person, $1,200–2,000.” For what it’s worth, Statistics Korea reported that in Q1 2026 the average household spent ₩3.105M (~$2,050) a month against an income of ₩5.481M (~$3,620). Spending was up 5.3% from a year earlier, while real income barely moved. The thing Koreans grumble about constantly — “everything went up except my salary” — turns out to be statistically true.
The problem is that these are all averages. An average is a house nobody actually lives in. Whether you have kids, whether you own a car, which neighborhood you’re in, and — above all — how you secured your home: each of these swings the number completely. That last one I’ll come back to, because it’s the part that’s hardest to grasp from the outside, and it’s exactly why almost every guide quietly tacks on “rent excluded.”
Our actual month, line by line
So here’s the receipt. I’ve converted everything at roughly 1 USD = ₩1,515 (mid-2026). Worth noting: the won has weakened about 11% over the past year, so in dollar terms Korea looks cheaper than it feels to the people living here.
| Category | Monthly (KRW) | USD |
|---|---|---|
| Maintenance fee (incl. electricity, water, internet, TV license) | ₩300,000 | ~$200 |
| Groceries (supermarket + my work lunches) | ₩1,000,000 | ~$660 |
| Eating out + delivery | ₩300,000 | ~$200 |
| Car (fuel, insurance, maintenance) | ₩400,000 | ~$265 |
| Public transit (subway commute) | ₩80,000 | ~$53 |
| Kindergarten (out-of-pocket) | ₩100,000 | ~$66 |
| Three after-school classes | ₩400,000 | ~$265 |
| Phone | ₩180,000 | ~$120 |
| Insurance | ₩250,000 | ~$165 |
| Everything else (clothes, leisure, gifts) | ₩400,000 | ~$265 |
| Subtotal (housing excluded) | ₩3,410,000 | ~$2,250 |
Let me unpack a few of these.
Maintenance fee — ₩300,000 (~$200). Korean apartments charge a monthly gwalli-bi (관리비, building maintenance fee). Cleaning, security, and elevators are the baseline, but ours also bundles in electricity, water, internet, the TV license, and even the building gym and sauna — all on a single bill. It’s not a flat number, though. Korea has four very distinct seasons, so the bill swings hard: air conditioning in summer, heating in winter. Receiving the January bill and sighing at it is an annual ritual for Korean households.
Groceries — ₩1,000,000 (~$660). Honestly, the biggest line. For home cooking we mostly use Coupang Rocket Fresh (쿠팡 로켓프레시, dawn grocery delivery) and our neighborhood Emart (이마트, a big-box supermarket), and this figure also folds in the lunches I buy at work on weekdays. Korean groceries — produce and fruit especially — are pricier than people expect. Eggs, beef, apples: the basics run well above OECD averages. “Isn’t Korean food cheap?” holds up for a restaurant meal, but not for the shopping cart.
Eating out + delivery — ₩300,000 (~$200). Surprisingly less than the grocery line. A restaurant meal in Korea is relatively cheap, so eating out itself isn’t the budget-killer.
Car — ₩400,000 (~$265). Fuel, auto insurance, and maintenance combined. I commute by subway on weekdays, so the car is mostly for weekend family outings.
Public transit — ₩80,000 (~$53). Subway from Seongnam to Gangnam. Korean public transit is cheap even by global standards, so this is what daily commuting costs.
Kindergarten — ₩100,000 (~$66). Korea has the Nuri Curriculum (누리과정, a government childcare subsidy) that covers a big chunk of kindergarten and daycare costs for ages 3–5. There’s still an out-of-pocket portion for things like special activities, which lands around ₩100,000 a month.
Three after-school classes — ₩400,000 (~$265). Yes, my seven-year-old goes to three hagwon (학원, private academies): art, English, and broadcast dance. More on that below.
Phone ₩180,000 / Insurance ₩250,000 / Everything else ₩400,000. Mobile plans (internet is bundled into the maintenance fee above), our coverage insurance beyond the basic health and auto policies, and the catch-all of clothes, leisure, and the cash gifts Korean social life constantly demands for weddings and funerals.
Add it all up and our month, minus housing, comes to ₩3,410,000, about $2,250.
So why do I keep saying “minus housing”? Because that’s where Korea hides its biggest trap.
Housing — the wildcard that changes everything
This is the part that confuses people most. Housing costs in Korea don’t come in one shape. They split roughly three ways.
First, jeonse (전세, Korea’s lump-sum deposit lease). Instead of paying monthly rent, you hand the landlord a massive deposit — often more than half the home’s value — and live with zero monthly rent. When the lease ends, you get the entire deposit back. If you don’t have that kind of cash, you take out a jeonse loan and pay interest on it each month. That interest ranges wildly from person to person — anywhere from zero to nearly ₩1,000,000 (~$660) a month.
Second, wolse (월세, monthly rent). A smaller deposit plus a monthly payment — the closest thing to “rent” in the Western sense.
Third, ₩0 if you can afford it. If you bought your jeonse outright without a loan, or you own your place, almost nothing leaves your account for housing each month.
So two families living otherwise identical lives can differ by ₩1,000,000 a month: one paying jeonse interest, one paying wolse, one paying nothing. In my case it’s jeonse loan interest, around ₩600,000 (~$396) a month. That’s the real reason a single “cost of living in Korea per month” number doesn’t exist. The box that foreign guides leave blank as “rent excluded” is the box that swings the most from one Korean household to the next.
(I broke down exactly how jeonse works in a separate post.)
Three things that surprise people from outside Korea
Lay the receipt out item by item and a few lines tend to raise eyebrows from outside Korea.
One: a seven-year-old with three classes. Art, English, broadcast dance. I’ll admit it feels a little sheepish to write down. But in Korea this isn’t even on the heavy end — the neighbor kids do more. I know the private-education arms race is a real social problem, and some nights I do wonder, “Is this right?” And yet you can’t be the one parent who pulls their kid out, in case they fall behind. That contradiction sits right at the center of raising kids in Korea.
Two: the grocery cart is expensive. As I said, eating out can be cheap, but the ingredients for home cooking are not. A few pieces of fruit and a little meat and the receipt jumps. Comparison-shopping through dawn delivery is basically a survival strategy.
Three: by contrast, healthcare and transit are shockingly cheap. A daily subway commute runs ₩80,000 (~$53) a month. A neighborhood clinic visit, thanks to national health insurance, is often done for around ₩10,000 (~$7).
The money that doesn’t fit in the table — travel and leisure
That table covers the fixed costs that leave my account every single month. But there’s a category that quietly takes up real space in the budget and never shows up on a monthly line: the irregular stuff.
The biggest is one overseas trip a year. For three of us, a single trip runs ₩2,000,000–4,000,000 (~$1,320–2,640). Spread across the year, that’s effectively ₩170,000–330,000 a month — basically another fixed cost wearing a disguise. On top of that, spring and fall weekend trips and camping add up throughout the year. There’s a reason Korean families are forever heading somewhere on weekends, and that fun comes with a price tag.
So what’s the real cost of living in Korea?
Here’s where it lands.
Our household runs ₩3,410,000 (~$2,250) a month before housing. Add my jeonse interest of ₩600,000 and that’s roughly ₩4,010,000 a month, about $2,650. On top of that, travel and leisure pile on a few million won a year.
We’re a bit above the national average household spending of ₩3.105M — but the gap isn’t from any single thing. It’s the mix: housing differs by household, so does how much you drive (fuel), and how much you spend on eating out and travel. Whatever’s left over goes into savings and paying down the loan, though with prices the way they are lately, that cushion gets thinner every year.
Because the won has weakened, all of this probably looks pretty reasonable in dollars. But it doesn’t feel that way from the inside. The salary stays flat while the grocery cart, the maintenance bill, and the class fees all creep up year after year. That’s what raising a family of three in Korea in 2026 actually looks like.
Where would your own budget look most different — groceries? housing? Or did you already stop at three classes for a seven-year-old?
This is an example based on one household’s spending. Actual costs vary widely by family size, region, and habits. This is not financial advice.
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