Since December 18, 2025, Korea’s revised consumer dispute resolution standard has let “reservation-based” restaurants charge up to 40% of your bill for a no-show or late cancellation, up from a flat 10% before — and the same update rewrote cancellation fees for wedding halls and expanded free-cancellation rules for hotels too.
I found this out the annoying way, three days before a sushi counter booking I’d made on CatchTable (캐치테이블, kaechi teibeul, Korea’s dominant restaurant reservation app). First, the actual rule change, because most of what’s floating around in English right now only tells you a third of it.
What Changed on December 18, 2025, Exactly
The Fair Trade Commission (공정거래위원회, Gongjeong-georae Wiwonhoe, Korea’s antitrust and consumer-protection regulator) updated the consumer dispute resolution standard (소비자분쟁해결기준, sobija bunjaeng haegyeol gijun — a non-binding rulebook the government, mediators, and small-claims courts all use as the default formula when a contract dispute doesn’t specify its own terms).
Before this update, every restaurant in Korea was capped at a flat 10% no-show or cancellation fee, no matter what kind of place it was. That single number is gone. In its place: a two-tier system for restaurants, a brand-new step schedule for wedding halls, wider free-cancellation coverage for hotels, a first-ever standard for study cafes, and revised cancellation fees for rail and intercity bus tickets — all in the same package, all effective the same day. Almost every English write-up I’ve seen stops at the restaurant number and never mentions the other four.
Regular Restaurants vs. “Reservation-Based” Restaurants: The 20% vs. 40% Split
Here’s the part that actually matters for anyone booking a table. Restaurants now fall into two buckets, and the gap between them is real money.
| Restaurant type | Old cap (before Dec 18, 2025) | New cap | Fee on a ₩150,000 booking |
|---|---|---|---|
| Regular restaurant (walk-ins welcome) | 10% | 20% | ₩15,000 → ₩30,000 |
| Reservation-only restaurant (omakase, tasting counters, private rooms) | 10% | 40% | ₩15,000 → ₩60,000 |
| Regular restaurant, group/bulk order with advance written notice | 10% | up to 40% | ₩15,000 → ₩60,000 |
That third row surprised me the most. A regular neighborhood place that takes walk-ins all night can still charge the higher 40% rate, but only if it’s a large or bulk order and the owner sent you a written notice, text message, or email spelling out that fee before you booked. No advance notice, no 40%; they’re stuck at 20% like every other regular restaurant. The deposit cap moves with the fee cap, too — up to 40% up front for reservation-based restaurants and 20% for regular ones, instead of a flat 10%. The split tracks capacity, not price: a walk-in place can usually refill a vacated table within minutes, while reservation-only formats — omakase counters, hanwoo private rooms, degustation-course restaurants — have already committed the ingredients to that specific seat, making a no-show close to a full loss.
My CatchTable Near-Miss: The Seat That Almost Cost Me an Extra ₩45,000
I’d booked a single counter seat at a sushi omakase place through CatchTable, priced at ₩150,000. A scheduling conflict came up at work — a meeting moved onto the same evening — and I went to cancel two days out, mentally filing it under “10% penalty, fine, that’s the cost of doing business.” I still had the old number in my head.
It’s not 10% anymore. The cancellation screen on the app quoted 40%, which on a ₩150,000 seat is ₩60,000 instead of ₩15,000. That’s ₩45,000 gone before I’d eaten a single piece of nigiri. I track the household budget in a spreadsheet, so watching the fee quadruple in one screen tap actually stung. I ended up rearranging the work meeting instead of eating the fee, which, honestly, was the correct financial decision.
The unsettling part wasn’t the amount — it’s that nothing in the app flagged this as new. The fee was just there, quietly recalculated, as if 40% had always been the number. If you booked a tasting menu or an omakase counter anytime after mid-December and didn’t specifically check the cancellation terms, there’s a decent chance you’re carrying the same outdated 10% assumption I was.
It’s Not Just Restaurants: Wedding Halls and Hotels Got Rewritten Too
This is the part almost nobody covers. The same reform created a step-by-step cancellation schedule for wedding halls (예식장, yesikjang — a rented banquet venue that hosts both the ceremony and reception as one package, standard for most Korean weddings), replacing the old vague “reasonable fee” language with fixed percentages tied to how close you are to the date.
| Timing of cancellation | Fee (% of total contract) | On a ₩30,000,000 package |
|---|---|---|
| 29–10 days before the ceremony | 40% | ₩12,000,000 |
| 9–1 days before | 50% | ₩15,000,000 |
| Cancelled the day of | up to 70% | ₩21,000,000 |
| Venue cancels on you, 29+ days out (their fault) | 70% owed to the couple | ₩21,000,000 |
My wife’s cousin got married last spring, and the venue quote she showed us landed almost exactly on ₩30,000,000, which is why that’s the number in the table. Look at that bottom row again: if the wedding hall is the one that cancels on you with less than a month’s notice, they now owe you 70% back, not the other way around. Before this update, that liability ran almost entirely one direction, toward the couple.
Hotels changed too, though less dramatically: free cancellation for weather or disaster events used to require the disaster to hit the hotel’s own location; now it also covers your travel route — a typhoon blocking the road counts too, not just one at the destination. Separately, the same reform created Korea’s first-ever study cafe standard (스터디카페, seuteodi kape, pay-per-hour private study booths popular with students and remote workers) and revised rail and intercity bus cancellation fees.
Before You Book: A Checklist for CatchTable and Naver Reservation
Naver Reservation (네이버 예약, Naver yeyak — the booking widget built directly into Naver Maps and search results, which most small Korean restaurants use instead of a standalone app) and CatchTable both display cancellation terms, but you have to actually look for them. I put this checklist together after nearly getting my own CatchTable fee wrong, so each line maps to a mistake I could see myself making again. The first two items are the ones that actually decide which tier — 20% or 40% — applies to you; the last two just confirm the app got the math right. It takes about ten seconds to run through, and every item on it exists because I could picture myself skipping that exact check the next time I’m rushing through a booking. Here’s what I check now before I confirm anything:
- Is a walk-in even possible here? If the restaurant is booth- or counter-only and requires a reservation to eat at all — most omakase and tasting-menu places — assume the 40% tier applies, not 20%.
- For group or catering orders, did they message you first? The 40% group exception only holds up if the restaurant gave you written notice — text, email, or an actual document — before you placed the order. A verbal mention at the counter doesn’t count.
- Does the confirmation screen actually state a percentage? Both apps are supposed to disclose the cancellation fee at booking. If a reservation-based restaurant’s app page shows a number under 40% or a regular restaurant shows over 20% without a group order, something doesn’t add up — screenshot it.
- Does the deposit match the fee cap? If they’re asking for a deposit above 20% (regular) or 40% (reservation-based) of your expected total at the time of booking, that’s already over the line before you’ve even cancelled anything.
What to Do If a Business Charges More Than the Legal Cap
Because the standard is a guideline rather than a statute, a business can technically write a higher fee into its own contract. In practice it rarely holds up once challenged, since mediators and courts default to the standard when judging whether a term is “unfair.”
If you get charged above the cap: first, save the booking confirmation and any cancellation notice showing the percentage charged. Then contact the Korea Consumer Agency (한국소비자원, Hanguk Sobija-won) directly or call the 1372 Consumer Counseling Center, a nationwide hotline that routes complaints to the right office, no lawyer required. If you paid by card, especially a foreign-issued one, a chargeback request citing the published fee cap is also worth filing with your card issuer while the consumer complaint works its way through.
Quick Answers If You’re Booking in Korea Right Now
How much of a deposit is normal now?
For a regular restaurant, up to 20% of your expected bill. For a reservation-only place like an omakase counter, up to 40%. Anything higher than that at the time of booking is already outside the new cap.
What actually happens if you just don’t show up?
You lose the deposit up to the applicable cap — 20% or 40% depending on the restaurant type — and for wedding halls or hotels, the venue’s own cancellation-fee schedule applies instead, which can run as high as 70% depending on timing.
What exactly changed from the pre-December 2025 rules?
The old flat 10% fee for every restaurant is gone. It split into a 20% cap for regular restaurants and a 40% cap for reservation-based ones, plus brand-new tiered rules for wedding halls, expanded hotel cancellation coverage, and a first-ever study cafe standard, all from the same December 18, 2025 update.
Does this apply to hotels and wedding halls too, or just restaurants?
All of the above. Wedding halls now follow a 40%/50%/70% step schedule based on how close to the date you cancel, and hotels have wider free-cancellation rights for weather and disaster disruptions along your travel route, not just at the hotel’s location.
How do you tell if a restaurant is allowed to charge 40% instead of 20%?
Reservation-only format (no walk-ins) is the main signal. A regular restaurant can only reach 40% for a group or bulk order, and only if it gave you written, text, or email notice of that fee before you booked.
What can you actually do if a business charges more than the legal cap?
Keep your booking and cancellation records, then file with the Korea Consumer Agency or call the 1372 Consumer Counseling Center. If you paid by card, a chargeback citing the published cap is a reasonable parallel step.
I’m still annoyed about the ₩45,000, if I’m being honest, even though rearranging that meeting was clearly the smarter move. What I’ve actually changed is small but permanent: I read the cancellation line on every CatchTable and Naver Reservation screen now, before I confirm anything, instead of assuming it’s whatever it was the last time I looked. It reminds me a bit of the time I told a friend that any internet plan in Korea was basically interchangeable, right before she ate a ₩217,000 early-exit penalty — this country keeps quietly rewriting the fine print on things you’d stopped double-checking.