Sick Days: Not many schools in Korea offer paid sick days. Teacher salaries are based on how many class hours they work each month, and if a teacher misses class because illness and another teacher has to cover for them, the school will have to pay that other teacher overtime. For this reason, foreign teachers who are quite sick and absolutely can't go in to teach must either make up the missed classes at another time or take a reduction in pay for that month equal to their total monthly salary divided by the number of class hours they teach per month and multiplied by the number of classes they missed.

Emergency leave: Everyone is human and thus we all, at some point in our lives, have situations come up in which everything else becomes a lesser priority. Korean culture is very sensitive to this and, as such, emergency leave is rarely a problem. Schools will usually allow about a week to attend family emergencies such as the death of an immediate family member. Emergency leave may be without pay, so teachers need to check their contracts.