National Pension Service data
How many people work there?
Every Korean employer files a monthly pension contribution for each member of staff, and those filings are public. So headcount, average pay and a year of staffing history are checkable — whatever the company brochure says.
Corporations with three or more subscribers, sole traders with ten or more.
What this tells you
Real headcount
Not the number in the company profile — the number of people it actually paid contributions for last month.
Average pay
Recovered from the contribution bill, the subscriber count and that month's statutory rate.
Twelve-month trend
Whether staffing is rising or falling. A single month cannot show you this at all.
Filed figures, not brochure figures
The hardest thing to establish in diligence is how big a counterparty really is. Headcount appears in the company profile with nothing behind it, and financial statements arrive once a year.
Pension filings accumulate every month, and each one is backed by money the company actually paid. A firm can inflate a headcount in a slide; it cannot make an unpaid contribution look paid.
Subscribers can come out lower than the real workforce, but never higher. That asymmetry is what makes the number worth checking.
Who looks this up
Overseas buyers
Checking whether the two-hundred-person factory in the pitch deck exists.
Companies before they pay
Confirming a counterparty is the size it claims, before the invoice clears.
People weighing an offer
Whether the salary is in line, and whether the team has been shrinking.