"Overlaps with Saturday, But No Day Off?"... Will Monday, the 28th, Be Designated as a Temporary Holiday?

With the Chuseok holiday about a week away, attention is growing on whether Monday, the 28th, will be designated as a temporary holiday.

Last year, National Foundation Day, Hangeul Day, the weekend, and alternative holidays lined up, allowing people to take up to 10 days off by using a single day of annual leave on Friday.

In contrast, this year's Chuseok holiday spans three days from Thursday the 24th to Saturday the 26th.

Even when adding Sunday the 27th, the holiday period stops at four days.

This is because this year's Chuseok holiday does not overlap with Sunday or other public holidays, meaning an alternative holiday does not apply to the 28th.

The current Regulations on Public Holidays of Government Offices apply different standards for alternative holidays depending on the type of public holiday.

National holidays such as Liberation Day, National Foundation Day, and Hangeul Day, along with Children's Day, grant the next non-holiday as an alternative holiday if they overlap with a Saturday or Sunday.

However, Seollal (Lunar New Year) and Chuseok are different.

An alternative holiday is created only when the holiday period overlaps with Sunday, and overlapping with Saturday alone does not generate an alternative holiday.

Of course, the government can designate necessary days as temporary holidays through deliberation by the State Council.

Previously, ahead of Seollal last year, the government designated January 27, 2025, as a temporary holiday on January 14 of the same year, allowing a six-day break combining the weekend and the Seollal holiday.

However, some views suggest that the justification for designating the 28th as a temporary holiday this year is not significant.

This is because criticisms have been raised that designating temporary holidays can lead to an increase in outbound travel demand rather than domestic consumption revitalization.

In fact, during the Seollal holiday last year, a six-day holiday was created due to the designation of a temporary holiday, and at that time, approximately 2,972,000 people departed for overseas, marking the largest monthly scale on record.

The burden on businesses is also a variable.

If a holiday is designated abruptly, it can cause production disruptions due to halted operations as well as additional costs such as holiday allowance payments.

So far, it is reported that the government is not officially reviewing plans to designate the 28th as a temporary holiday.

Reported by Jung Da-eun | Video by Kim Na-on | Graphics by Lee Jeong-ju | Produced by SBS Digital News
※ Please note: This article was translated by AI and may contain errors.