Does a solo company need HR tooling?

Yes. Even solo, you must file 4대보험 and 연말정산. Either delegate to a tax accountant or automate with something like Flex.

What is the difference between Flex and Shiftee?

Flex: full HR — payroll, contracts, 연말정산. Shiftee: attendance/shift specialist. Retail and F&B typically pair them.

Do I need a Korean tool if I already have global HR like BambooHR?

If your Korean entity has employees, yes. 4대보험, 연말정산, and 주민번호 handling are not covered by global HR.

Korea HR Tools for Small Teams

What Korean HR must handle

Korean HR has the following mandatory items:

1. **4대보험 (4 insurances)**: National pension, health, employment, workers' comp. Hire/leave reporting 2. **연말정산 (year-end settlement)**: Jan–Feb reconciliation, employee self-entry + company aggregation 3. **주민번호 encrypted storage**: Legal obligation under PIPA 4. **Withholding + income statement**: Hometax integration 5. **Pay slips**: Electronic issuance

Global HR tools cannot automate any of these.

Criteria

**4대보험 reporting integration**
**연말정산 automation** (employee self-entry portal)
**주민번호 encrypted storage**
**Hometax / gov24 integration**
**Electronic employment contracts**
**Leave/attendance/shift management**
**Affordable plans (under KRW 100k/month at small scale)**

Picks

Flex (flex-hr) The Korean startup HR standard. Integrates payroll, 4대보험, 연말정산, electronic employment contracts. Clean UI.

Shiftee Attendance/shift-focused. Widely used in food service and retail. Payroll module is separate.

Dayoff Simplified leave management. Low-cost adoption for small teams. Not full HR.

JobKorea / Saramin HR solutions Recruitment-to-HR pipelines. Enterprise-tier bundles.

Douzone / ecount (traditional ERP) Realistic ERP integration path at 50+ people.

Common stacks

**1–10 people**: Flex alone
**10–30 people**: Flex + Shiftee (if attendance is complex)
**30–100 people**: Flex + Douzone ERP or equivalent
**Remote/flex work**: Flex + Dayoff + Swit/Dooray

Pitfalls

Keeping 주민번호 in Excel: PIPA violation. HR SaaS is required even at 1 employee
Starting 연말정산 in mid-December: too late. Announce and set up by early November
Running only global HR without a Korean tool: missed filings

Korean HR has many legal requirements. Even a one-person company needs at least 연말정산 and 4대보험 automated or delegated, and a tool like Flex handles most of it.