Freelance Service Agreement

About this template

When to use it

A four-page Freelance Service Agreement for engaging an individual to complete a piece of work. The title page reads “This is not an employment contract; it engages someone to complete a piece of work“, and Articles 1 to 15 follow the Korean pattern of article, paragraph (circled numbers) and item. Three things keep it outside employment: no direction or supervision (Article 6), 3.3 percent withholding on business income and no national insurance (KR) (Article 7). The six-row summary under the preamble — Service name, Project period, Service fee, Payment method, Withholding tax, National insurance (KR) — carries no performance bond and no liquidated-damages rate, because what gets argued over here is payment and acceptance.

Fix these first

1. The Service name cell holds only a prompt in parentheses. Delete it and write the real name of the work; blank, it leaves every article below pointing at nothing.
2. The signature table names the Contractor as an individual. For a company, swap in the trade name and business registration number; otherwise the resident registration number goes in Registration No. (business · resident).
3. The 40 percent advance / 60 percent on delivery split in Article 4 is a sample; on a larger fee, a third payment after interim acceptance is safer for both.
4. The Article 9 table runs W1 to W4 at 25, 50, 75 and 100%, assuming a four-week job; a different length means editing the stage names and percentages together.
5. Withholding and a tax invoice are alternatives, not a pair. Article 4(3) assumes an individual with no business registration; for a VAT-registered contractor you take a tax invoice and do not withhold, which means editing both the Withholding tax row and Article 4(3).

Where it parts from an employment contract

• Preamble — the Contractor “is not an employee of the Client”, and the same sentence records that this Agreement is not an employment contract under the Labor Standards Act.
• Article 6 — the Contractor “performs the work at its own discretion and on its own responsibility, and is not subject to the Client’s direction or supervision”, with items putting working hours, task order and place of work in the Contractor’s hands.
• Article 7 — 3.3 percent withholding, the four insurances excluded, and item 3: “No severance pay, annual paid leave or weekly holiday allowance arises”.
• Article 11 — the Contractor may take on other work and the Client “shall not disadvantage the Contractor for doing so”. Not tying the person exclusively is part of what keeps this outside employment.

Payment and acceptance interlock

Article 4(2) ties the advance to “within 5 business days of the Work Plan being confirmed” and the balance to “within 10 business days of the Acceptance Certificate being issued”, which is why Article 2 defines both terms first. Article 8 sets the acceptance standards — first output submitted 2 wks, free revisions 2, deadline for notice of acceptance 7 days, total performance period 4 wks — and adds the line that matters most: if the Client does not give the result within that deadline, the Deliverables are treated as having passed acceptance. Change those four numbers to fit the job, and Article 3(2) with them.

Article 15 is the one that gets used

Articles 5, 6 and 7 all close by sending out-of-scope requests back to Special terms, and what is written in those two blank rows prevails over the main text. Rights in the output are the obvious candidate: Article 5 fixes the format and delivery of the output but never says when copyright moves. Copyright starts with whoever created the work, so a transfer has to be written down — commonly on full payment, with the Contractor’s pre-existing tools and libraries licensed rather than assigned.

Wording loses to practice

Article 13 caps the Contractor’s liability at the total service fee and records that this Agreement provides for no liquidated damages for delay and no penalty for breach; if a client insists on delay damages, put the rate and its ceiling in Article 15. None of that settles the question on its own. Set someone’s start and finish times and give them day-to-day instructions and they may be treated as an employee, with national insurance (KR) and severance pay owed retrospectively — so matching how the work is run to what the articles say is the real task. This template is a general form and is not legal advice; for a large or repeating engagement, have it reviewed before use.