South Korea Visa Requirements: Visa-Free Entry, K-ETA and e-Arrival

South Korea’s visa waiver list covers about 110 countries and territories, split between countries with formal visa-waiver agreements (B-1 status) and those admitted visa-free on a reciprocal basis (B-2 status). At the border the difference does not matter: you get a stamp-free entry record, and the length depends on your passport.

The 90-day clock runs from the day you enter, and leaving and coming back does not automatically give you a fresh 90 days if officers think you are living in Korea. A short trip to Japan in the middle of a long stay is common and generally fine; repeated back-to-back visits of 90 days are what attract questions. Visa-free entry is for tourism, visiting friends, conferences and short business meetings only, and does not allow paid work of any kind.

The Korea Electronic Travel Authorization (K-ETA) is Korea’s equivalent of the US ESTA. If your nationality is visa-exempt and not on the temporary waiver list, you must hold an approved K-ETA before you board a flight or ship to Korea, or the airline will refuse you. Apply on the official k-eta.go.kr site or the K-ETA app with your passport, a photo, your Korean address and your travel details. The fee is 10,000 won (about $7) plus a small card processing charge, results usually arrive within 72 hours (often within minutes), and an approval is valid for multiple trips for the period stated on it, typically several years, as long as your passport remains valid.

Applications are sometimes refused, notably for nationalities with high overstay rates, and a refusal gives no reason. If that happens you can still apply for a regular visa at a Korean embassy. A K-ETA has one practical bonus: holders do not need to submit an arrival card.

Since April 2023, Korea has waived the K-ETA for nationals of a list of countries to boost tourism. The Ministry of Justice has extended it twice, most recently for the period 1 January to 31 December 2026. The 22 countries and territories covered are Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Italy, Japan, Macao, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, Singapore, Spain, Sweden, Taiwan, the United Kingdom and the United States.

If your trip continues past 31 December 2026, or you are booking travel for early 2027, watch for an announcement: as of late October 2026 no further extension has been published, and if none comes, these nationalities will need a K-ETA from 1 January 2027. The K-ETA site shows a “K-ETA exempt” pop-up when you select an exempt nationality, which is the quickest way to check. Exempt travellers may still apply for a K-ETA voluntarily, paying the fee, to skip the arrival card.

Korea has replaced the paper landing card with an online e-Arrival Card. Every foreign visitor arriving without an approved K-ETA, including those on the waiver list and visa holders, must submit one on the official e-Arrival Card site (e-arrivalcard.go.kr) up to three days before arrival. It is free, takes about five minutes, and asks for your passport details, flight number, address in Korea and purpose of visit. One person can file for a family or a group, and you need no printout: immigration sees it when your passport is scanned.

Unofficial sites charging $20 to $50 for the same form rank high in search results. The real one charges nothing. If you forget, you can fill it in on your phone in the arrivals hall before immigration, but expect to be sent to the back of the queue.

If your passport is not visa-exempt, or you want to do something visa-free entry does not allow, you need a visa before you travel.

• C-3 short-term visit visa: the standard tourist and business-visit visa for up to 90 days, single or multiple entry, applied for at a Korean embassy or consulate or, for some nationalities, as an e-visa on the Korea Visa Portal. Expect to show bank statements, a return ticket and hotel bookings.
• H-1 working holiday: for 18 to 30-year-olds (35 for some countries) from around 25 partner countries including Australia, Canada, the UK, France and Germany; one year of travel with casual work allowed.
• E-2 language teaching and D-2 or D-4 student visas: the most common long-stay routes for English speakers, sponsored by a school or university.
• D-10 job-seeker visa: a points-based visa to stay and look for professional work.

Visa-free stays generally cannot be extended or converted to another status inside Korea except in emergencies such as illness or cancelled flights, which you handle at an immigration office before your permitted stay runs out.

Jeju Island runs its own visa-free scheme: nationals of most countries, including many who need a visa for the mainland such as China, Vietnam and the Philippines, can stay on Jeju Island, including Jeju City and Seogwipo, for up to 30 days without a visa, provided they fly or sail directly to Jeju from abroad. A short list of nationalities is excluded. Under this scheme you cannot travel on to the mainland, and airlines check at boarding. Travellers who already enter visa-free elsewhere in Korea gain nothing from it, but it makes a Jeju-only holiday easy for visitors from neighbouring countries: a week is enough to climb Hallasan, walk sections of the Olle Trail and take the ferry to Udo.

Overstaying is treated seriously. Fines are imposed when you leave, rising with the length of the overstay, and can reach millions of won for long overstays; anything beyond a few days risks a departure order, deportation and a ban on re-entry, typically from one to ten years. Leaving voluntarily and reporting to immigration beforehand gets a much lighter penalty than being caught. If a flight cancellation or illness will take you past your permitted date, go to an immigration office or call the 1345 immigration helpline before it expires.

Entry can also be refused on arrival. Immigration officers can ask for a return or onward ticket, your accommodation address and proof of funds, and they refuse visitors they suspect of planning to work. Passports should be valid for the length of your stay; six months’ validity is the safe standard airlines expect. Korea’s drug laws apply to what you carry in and to what is in your system: travellers have been detained after positive tests for cannabis used legally elsewhere.

Almost everyone enters through Incheon International Airport, an hour west of Seoul, where immigration usually takes 15 to 45 minutes; first-time visitors are fingerprinted and photographed at the desk. Busan’s Gimhae airport, Daegu, Cheongju and Jeju also handle international flights, and Gimpo in Seoul takes short-haul flights from Tokyo, Osaka, Shanghai and Taipei. By sea, ferries run between Busan and Fukuoka, Osaka and Shimonoseki in Japan, and between Incheon or Pyeongtaek and several Chinese ports. The same visa, K-ETA and arrival card rules apply at the ferry terminals. There is no open land border: the DMZ with North Korea can only be visited on organised tours from the south.

Children follow the same rules as adults. Each child needs their own passport and, if their nationality requires it, their own K-ETA, although one parent can file the e-Arrival Card for the whole family. A child travelling with only one parent or with grandparents is not normally asked for a consent letter, but carrying one does no harm.

Leaving and re-entering is simple for visa-free travellers: each entry starts a new permitted stay, so a trip to Japan or Taiwan mid-holiday needs no extra paperwork. Officers do question visitors who have spent most of the past year in Korea on back-to-back stays.

If 90 days is not enough and you work remotely for a company outside Korea, the workation visa (F-1-D) is the long-stay option. Since the June 2026 changes it can run up to three years. It requires at least a year’s employment or equivalent self-employment, income of roughly one to two times Korea’s gross national income per head depending on your age and where you live (about $37,000 to $74,000 a year), private health insurance of at least 100 million won and a criminal record check, and you apply at a Korean embassy or consulate. Holders register for an alien registration card within 90 days, and most base themselves in Seoul, Busan or Jeju, with Daegu and Daejeon as cheaper alternatives. Our South Korea visas for digital nomads page covers eligibility, documents and tax in detail.

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