Korea Company Headcount (National Pension 국민연금 가입자 수)

Get the monthly headcount, new hires and leavers of South Korean companies from the National Pension Service workplace registry (국민연금공단 국민연금 가입 사업장 내역). Search by Korean company name, optionally with the business registration number (사업자등록번호), and get up to 12 months of history per workplace, plus the pension contributions billed each month (a capped payroll proxy).

No API key or Korean account needed. Paste company names, get English JSON.

Every Korean employer must enroll its employees in the National Pension, so the registry is the most complete public, monthly signal of how many people a Korean company employs and whether it is hiring or shrinking.

Typical uses

• Investors, VCs and alternative-data teams — track hiring and attrition at Korean startups and listed companies month by month.
• KYB, credit and supplier due diligence — check that a Korean counterparty really has staff, and whether it is still enrolled (active) or has left (withdrawn).
• Sales and recruiting intelligence — size Korean accounts and spot fast-growing teams.
• AI agents — "How many employees does Kakao have in Korea, and is it hiring?"

Input

Field	Description
companies	One per line: the Korean company name, optionally `
matchMode	exact (default): the workplace name must equal the given name, ignoring 주식회사 / (주) / ㈜, spaces and punctuation. contains: every corporate workplace whose name contains it (branches, construction sites, affiliates).
months	Months of history, 1 (latest only, default) to 12.
maxWorkplacesPerCompany	Default 5, up to 50. Each workplace is one charged result.
includeWithdrawn	Default true: also return workplaces that left the pension (closed, merged, moved).

{ "companies": ["주식회사 카카오 | 120-81-47521", "삼성전자(주) | 124-81-00998", "카카오페이"], "months": 3 }

The registry is searched by Korean name. If you only know the English name or the business number, find the Korean name first with Korea Business Check. Adding the business number is strongly recommended: the lookup is exact and much faster.

Output

One item per matched workplace:

{
  "input": "주식회사 카카오 | 120-81-47521",
  "query": { "name": "주식회사 카카오", "businessNumber": "1208147521" },
  "matchMode": "exact",
  "status": "found",
  "workplaceName": "주식회사 카카오",
  "entityType": "corporation",
  "businessNumberPrefix": "120-81-4****",
  "enrollmentStatus": "active",
  "enrolledOn": "1995-12-27",
  "withdrawnOn": null,
  "address": "제주특별자치도 제주시 첨단로",
  "legalDongCode": "50110136",
  "industryCode": "724000",
  "industryKo": "데이터베이스 및 온라인 정보 제공업",
  "dataMonth": "2026-08",
  "headcount": 3770,
  "newHires": 20,
  "leavers": 40,
  "pensionBilledKrw": 2212857800,
  "history": [
    { "month": "2026-08", "headcount": 3770, "newHires": 20, "leavers": 40, "pensionBilledKrw": 2212857800 },
    { "month": "2026-07", "headcount": 3798, "newHires": 30, "leavers": 48, "pensionBilledKrw": 2227917040 },
    { "month": "2026-06", "headcount": 3842, "newHires": 47, "leavers": 74, "pensionBilledKrw": 2167292980 }
  ],
  "error": null,
  "coverageNote": "Covers workplaces enrolled in the National Pension: corporations with 3+ members ...",
  "source": "National Pension Service (국민연금공단) enrolled workplace registry ...",
  "checkedAt": "2026-10-09T13:41:28+00:00"
}

status	Meaning
found	One item per matched workplace, with figures.
not_found	No corporate workplace with this name (and business number) — free.
invalid_input	Missing name or invalid business number (check digit failed) — free.
lookup_failed	The official source did not answer; retry later — free.

enrollmentStatus: active (등록) or withdrawn (탈퇴 — the workplace left the pension, for example after closing or merging). headcount = enrolled pension members; newHires / leavers = members who gained / lost enrollment that month; pensionBilledKrw = pension contributions billed for the month in KRW (employer + employee share, based on reported pay with a legal cap). Figures appear about one to two months after the month they describe.

Limitations — what is not included

• Headcount is pension members, not total staff. Employees over 60, most short-time part-timers and foreigners exempt by treaty are not enrolled, so the number is usually somewhat lower than reported employee counts.
• Per workplace, not per group. A company with several registered workplaces (plants, branches, construction sites) appears as several items; subsidiaries are separate companies. Use contains to see them all.
• Only corporations. The registry also lists sole proprietorships with 10+ members, but their workplace names can be personal names, so individual-owned workplaces are never returned.
• Business number is partial. The source publishes only the first 6 digits, so the number narrows the search but two companies can share a prefix; the name must also match.
• About 12 months of history. Older months are not available from this source.
• Name-only searches of very common names scan only the newest 500 matching records and may miss a workplace — add the business number.
• Names, addresses and industry names are returned in Korean, as filed.

Pricing

Pay per workplace returned: $0.003 per workplace (workplace-record), including all requested months of history. Companies not found, invalid inputs and failed lookups are free.

Use as an MCP tool (Claude, Cursor, other AI agents)

Add the Apify MCP server with this Actor:

https://mcp.apify.com?tools=kr-data/korea-company-headcount

Source and license

국민연금공단_국민연금 가입 사업장 내역 (data.go.kr 3046071), 이용허락범위 제한 없음. Data is passed through unchanged except for English field names and labels and the removal of individual-owned workplaces described above.

More Korean data from KR Data

• Korea Business Check (KYB) — business registration status, company profile, financials
• Korean Address to English — official English address and postal code
• Korean Law in English — official English text of Korean statutes
• Korea Flood-Damaged Car Check — flood-damage insurance records by license plate
• Korea Online Seller Registration Check — mail-order business registration (통신판매업) by business number
• Korea Drug & Medical Device Recalls — recent MFDS recalls and sales suspensions