The Supreme Court has ruled that overtime calculations should be determined by tallying hours by week and not by day.

The top court issued the ruling on Monday with regard to a case involving an employer who was indicted on charges of failing to properly pay the severance and overtime pay for an employee while violating the overtime limit 130 times between 2013 and 2016.

Under the Labor Standard Act, the regular workweek is defined as eight hours of regular work per day, 40 hours of regular work per week and 12 hours of overtime per week.

The employer facing charges, surnamed Lee, was fined one million won in the first two trials after the courts assessed that he had violated the overtime limit by calculating hours exceeding the limit of eight hours of regular work per day.

The top court overturned the ruling and sent back Lee’s case to a Seoul district court, saying it is desirable to assess whether overtime rules were broken based on excess work hours using a limit of 40 hours of regular work per week.