Working Hours in South Korea and Taiwan: Later Than You Think

South Korea (UTC+9) and Taiwan (UTC+8) sit in the same APAC cluster as Japan and China, but their working cultures have one practical advantage for scheduling: people work later. A 7pm call with a Seoul contact is not unusual. That opens overlap windows that you might not bother proposing with someone in Germany.

South Korea (KST, UTC+9)

Standard Time only — no DST, fixed UTC+9 year-round.

Official hours are 9am–6pm, but many professionals in tech, finance, and large corporations work until 7–9pm. If your overlap with Korea only works in the Korean evening, propose it. It’s more likely to land than you’d assume.

Key holidays:

• Chuseok (Korean Thanksgiving): 3 official days in September or October (lunar calendar), with surrounding days widely taken as leave. Treat it as a 5–7 day window.
• Seollal (Lunar New Year): Same structure as Chuseok, late January or February.
• National holidays: 1 March (Independence Movement Day), 15 August (Liberation Day).

Taiwan (TST, UTC+8)

Same offset as China and Singapore. No DST.

Working hours are similar to Korea — officially 9am–6pm, with overtime common in manufacturing, tech, and finance. Evening availability tends to be higher than in European counterparts.

Key holidays:

• Lunar New Year: 9–10 day official period, late January or February. Taiwan’s most significant holiday.
• National Day: 10 October.
• Dragon Boat Festival and Moon Festival add additional one-day holidays mid-year.

Overlap windows

For US East Coast teams, the 7–9pm EST window — which lands at 9–11am Seoul or 8–10am Taipei — is often the most realistic synchronous slot. It’s outside standard hours for the US side, but early enough in Asia to be a clear-headed start-of-day call rather than something squeezed into the end of the evening.

Neither country observes DST, so whatever overlap window you set up stays fixed year-round. Use meetwhen with Asia/Seoul or Asia/Taipei.