Korea Basic Farm Direct Payment Calculator

Check Korea’s basic farm payment and small-farm eligibility

This calculator applies Korean rules to 2026 basic public-interest agricultural direct payments.
Owning farmland alone does not establish entitlement: eligible land, actual farming, registration, lawful tenure and applicant requirements also matter.
Estimate one applicant’s area payment, then check the separate KRW 1,300,000 annual small-farm household alternative.

It is useful for farmers with parcels in different locations and family members helping review an application.
Land type, agricultural promotion-area classification, a spouse’s income and land owned by non-farming household members can affect the review.
Unknown records remain pending instead of being silently treated as zero.

The 2026 income amendment and application window

Use 2025 non-agricultural comprehensive income, excluding the agricultural and forestry income defined by the notice.
This is not monthly take-home pay or the sum of bank deposits.
Older guidance still showing KRW 37,000,000 must be read together with the later notice and its application provision.
The personal non-agricultural income exclusion does not apply to agricultural corporations.

Small-farm income conditions remain separate: each recipient must have non-agricultural income below KRW 20,000,000, and all household members combined must be below KRW 45,000,000.
Equality fails a strict below-threshold test.

Three land types and declining area rates

The categories are paddy or field within an agricultural promotion area, paddy outside it, and field outside it.
Rates decline across cumulative bands of up to 2 ha, over 2 through 6 ha, and over 6 ha.
The table gives Korean won per hectare.

Understand the area inputs and basic checks

The applicant confirmation covers the relevant existing-recipient, policy-recipient or new-entrant route.
An urban resident may need to meet an additional primary-farming test based on location and documented farming or sales.
Registration bans, land-transfer agreements and conflicting payments also require review.
Keep a check unconfirmed until you have the records; selecting yes does not replace the authority’s assessment.

Small-farm eligibility concerns the whole household

KRW 1,300,000 is an annual household payment to one eligible representative, not a separate award to each family member.
Corporations cannot receive it.
Household rules can include a spouse with another registered address, unmarried descendants under age 19 and people separated for no more than 3 years for reasons other than marriage.
Being registered as a non-head farm worker does not automatically make someone a separate payment recipient.

• All recipients’ eligible land normally totals no more than 0.5 ha.
  
• All household members’ owned farmland totals less than 1.55 ha.
  
• Every recipient has at least 3 continuous years of farming and rural residence immediately before the application year.
  
• Each recipient’s non-agricultural income is below KRW 20,000,000; all members, including non-farmers, total less than KRW 45,000,000.
  
• The decree’s individual income tests are below KRW 56,000,000 for livestock and below KRW 38,000,000 for facility cultivation.
  

Enter the shortest period among recipients and the highest individual income for each maximum field.
Include this applicant in every relevant total and maximum.
Owned land differs from cultivated or rented land: verify ownership shares and owned land that is not eligible for payment.
A break in farming or rural residence cannot simply be counted as elapsed time since the first starting date.

The over-0.5-ha exception and a fair household comparison

More than 0.5 ha does not always end the small-farm review.
If the other requirements are met, eligible land is no more than 1.55 ha and the household area-payment total is below KRW 1,300,000, the choice exception may apply.
Owned farmland must still independently remain below 1.55 ha.
An area-payment total exactly equal to KRW 1,300,000 does not satisfy this exception.

A non-promotion field of 0.8 ha produces KRW 1,200,000, potentially allowing the small-farm alternative if the other conditions are met.
The same area with a different land type can yield a different result.
Do not add the applicant’s area payment to the household’s small-farm payment; they are alternatives.

Verify the cumulative bands with official examples

These MAFRA examples are checked against the shared pure calculation function.
They do not prove a user’s eligibility, measured land or final payment.
Display amounts are rounded to won; individual rows can differ slightly from the rounded total, and administrative settlement may use its own truncation rules.

Step-by-step use and interpretation

1. Confirm that you are reviewing a 2026 application and select the applicant type.
   
2. Review basic registration requirements and enter active cultivation and previous-year income.
   
3. Enter eligible parcels by type, separating gross and excluded area without duplicates.
   
4. For a small-farm review, establish household membership before entering area, ownership, periods and income.
   
5. Read the conditional applicant amount, household alternative and unresolved checks in that order.
   
6. Save the CSV and use unresolved rows as questions for the local office.
   

The area-only reference is arithmetic based on confirmed land and ordinary caps.
It can remain visible when other eligibility checks fail or are unknown, so it must not be treated as promised payment.
The conditional area amount appears only after common checks pass.
Failing an additional small-farm condition does not automatically disqualify the applicant from the area-payment review.

Practical uses and limits

Ordinary caps are 30 ha for individuals and 50 ha for ordinary agricultural corporations, allocated in the statutory land-type order.
The 400 ha joint farming-entity cap, protected excess areas paid in 2019, succession and other special cases require separate assessment.
Select no for ordinary rules if such an exception applies.
Compliance reductions, improper-payment sanctions, strategic-crop, organic and local-government payments are outside this calculation.

Frequently asked questions