Korea D-2 Student Visa from Nepal: The Full Document List

The D-2 undergraduate visa has the longest document list of any Korean route open to Nepali applicants, and almost everything on it can be obtained if you start early enough.

Three items cannot.

Your academic documents must be verified by the Embassy of the Republic of Korea in Nepal before they count. If more than a year has passed since you graduated, a provisional certificate is not accepted and no substitute exists. And the tuberculosis test is valid only from one of four hospitals in the country, shared by every applicant on every long-stay route.

Those three set your timeline. The bank statement, the translations, the character certificates — all of that is a matter of weeks. The three above are a matter of months, and an application that discovers them in week three of a four-week plan is an application for the next intake.

This guide covers the D-2 undergraduate route from Nepal: what the university supplies, what you supply, how the statement of purpose is actually read, and the rules that admit no exceptions. For the requirements shared across all twelve routes — the Class A bank rule, validity windows, translation and notarisation — see Korean visa documents from Nepal.

Who this is for

A person applying for a student visa to pursue an undergraduate or bachelor's degree, staying more than ninety days.

If your situation is different, the route changes:

• Returning to a Korean university after approved leave → still D-2, but a different and much shorter list. See D-2 after a leave of absence
• A course of ninety days or less → not a student visa. The short-term general route, C-3-1, covers training and lessons
• Language study only, outside a degree programme → a different sub-category of student visa; confirm with the embassy which applies before assembling anything
• Postgraduate study → the list below is specified for undergraduate and bachelor's applicants, so confirm the requirements for your degree level rather than assuming they match

Context on studying in Korea sits in studying in Korea from Nepal and education links and scholarships.

Changes are coming. In October 2026 Korea's Ministry of Justice published a plan that would exempt students reaching TOPIK Level 4 from proving financial capacity, and extend the post-study job-seeking visa to as much as three years. None of it is in force, and the requirements below are still the ones that apply - but see Korea plans a student visa overhaul for what may change.

What your university in Korea supplies

Request these the moment your admission is confirmed. One rule governs all of them, and it catches people every year: documents originating in South Korea must be originals. A scan your university emailed you is not the document. Build postage or courier time into your plan.

• Standard admission certificate, the original and a photocopy
• A photocopy of the university's business registration certificate
• If applicable: scholarship certificate, original and photocopy
• If applicable: a financial affidavit from a professor, where a professor is supporting your tuition or living costs
• If applicable: the professor's job certificate, under the same condition

The professor's affidavit and job certificate travel together. If a professor is funding you, both are needed; one without the other leaves the funding claim unsupported.

What you supply from Nepal

The application

• Visa application form, with your original signature on page 5 matching your passport signature
• A recent passport-size photograph, taken within the last six months
• Passport, original and photocopy
• Visa cover letter
• Statement of purpose (SOP)

Your academic record

• Latest educational certificates for the degree you are applying to: transcript and graduation document, originals and photocopies
• Grade 11 mark sheet. The source list writes this simply as "11 Mark Sheet" — see the note below
• Character certificates
• A language result from IELTS, TOEFL, CEFR, TEPS, TOPIK or the Sejong Institute

Medical

• Tuberculosis medical report from one of only four hospitals designated by the embassy

Family

• Family relationship certificate, originals and photocopies
• Marriage certificate, originals and photocopies

Your consultancy

• A copy of the business registration certificate, notarised PAN, and ID (passport) of the consultancy representative

Money

• Balance certificate
• Bank statement for the last six months, accepted only from an A-level bank, issued within one month of your visa application date

At the end, clip all original documents together — academic transcripts, ward documents, IELTS and the rest — and submit them as a bundle.

All Nepali-language documents translated into English and notarised by an authorised notary public. General documents are valid three months from issue; verified educational documents carry a six-month validity.

A note on "11 Mark Sheet"

The requirement list writes this item as "11 Mark Sheet" with no further explanation. Read in the context of Nepal's school system it means your Grade 11 mark sheet, and that is how most consultancies interpret it. Because the phrasing is terse and the consequence of guessing wrong is a returned file, confirm with the embassy or your consultancy what they expect for your particular qualification route — especially if you studied under A-levels, an international board, or a diploma programme rather than the standard +2.

The three rules that admit no exceptions

Embassy verification of academic documents

All school documents and certificates must be verified by the Embassy of the Republic of Korea in Nepal. Unverified transcripts are not a weak submission; they are not a submission.

Two practical consequences. First, this is a process with its own queue and its own timeline, entirely outside your control, so it is the first thing to start — before the bank, before the translations, before the medical. Second, the list allows you to submit photocopies only where the verified documents have been sent directly to your university. If your university required the originals to be sent to them, you are not missing documents; you are in the case the rule anticipates. Make sure your cover letter says so explicitly, or a reviewer sees photocopies where originals were required.

Verified educational documents are valid for six months, which is longer than the three-month general window — so verification done early does not go stale while you assemble the rest.

The one-year provisional certificate rule

A provisional graduation certificate is accepted only from applicants who are within one year of their graduation date. If more than a year has passed, the official graduation certificate must be submitted, and the list states plainly that alternative documents will not be accepted. This follows Ministry of Justice guidelines, which means nobody at the counter has discretion to waive it.

This is the rule that most often ends an application that was otherwise ready. Students who finished two years ago, worked for a while, and are now applying with the provisional certificate their college gave them at the time are in exactly the position the rule excludes. If you are past a year, getting the official certificate from your institution and board is a prerequisite, not a formality — and institutional timelines in Nepal are not fast.

The four designated hospitals

The tuberculosis medical report is accepted from only four hospitals, named by the embassy:

• Patan Hospital, Patan
• Civil Service Hospital, New Baneshwor
• Korea Nepal Friendship Hospital — also known as Korea Thimi Hospital — Bhaktapur
• Sukraraj Tropical and Infectious Disease Hospital, Teku

A report from any other hospital, however reputable, is not accepted. Four facilities serve every D-2, F-3 and F-2-3 applicant in the country, and demand spikes around intake deadlines. Book as soon as your admission is confirmed.

The consultancy documents, and why they exist

One item on this list has no equivalent on any other route: a copy of the business registration certificate, notarised PAN and passport of your consultancy representative.

This is the embassy asking who advised you. Nepal's education consultancy sector is large, and the quality within it varies enormously — the same sector produces both careful advisers and the fabricated documents that make life harder for every honest applicant. Requiring the consultancy to be identified, registered and tax-visible puts a name against the advice.

Two implications for you. If you are using a consultancy, ask for these three documents early; a consultancy that is evasive about producing its own registration and PAN is telling you something important about itself. And if you are applying independently, raise it with the embassy rather than leaving the section blank — an unexplained gap looks like a missing document.

Writing the statement of purpose

The D-2 is the only route that asks for both a cover letter and an SOP, and they are not the same document. The cover letter is administrative: who you are, what you are applying for, what is enclosed. The SOP answers one question, which is the question the whole application turns on.

Is this person actually going to Korea to study?

Everything else in the file is verifiable by a third party — the university confirms admission, the bank confirms funds, the board confirms your transcript. The SOP is where a reviewer decides whether the pieces describe a student or describe a plausible route into the country. Write it accordingly.

What makes an SOP read as genuine:

A specific programme, for specific reasons. Name the degree, the university and the department, and give a reason connected to what you have already done. A mechanical engineering applicant whose transcript is strong in mathematics and physics has a story; the same applicant writing about a passion for Korean culture does not.

A connection between your past and the course. Your Grade 11 and 12 subjects, any work experience, any relevant project. The file already contains your transcript, so the SOP should make sense of it rather than restate it.

An honest account of how this is funded. Scholarship, family, a professor's affidavit, your own savings. It must match the financial documents exactly. A reviewer who finds the SOP describing self-funding while the file contains a professor's financial affidavit has found a contradiction.

A plan that extends past graduation. Not a promise to leave, which nobody believes, and not a declaration of intent to remain, which is not what a student visa is for. What the degree is for in your working life.

Language preparation. You are submitting an IELTS, TOPIK or equivalent result. Say what you are doing to be ready for teaching in the language your programme is taught in. If your course is in English at a Korean university, say how you will manage daily life in Korean — see learning Korean and TOPIK for Nepali students.

What sinks an SOP: generic praise for Korea, paragraphs that would apply to any country and any university, a stated field with no support anywhere in the transcript, and — most damagingly — anything that reads as though somebody else wrote it. Consultancy template SOPs are recognisable precisely because they circulate, and a reviewer who has read the same three paragraphs forty times reads the forty-first with suspicion.

Write it yourself. An imperfect SOP in your own voice is worth more than a polished one in somebody else's.

Sequencing a D-2 application

The order matters more here than on any other route, because three items have external timelines you cannot compress.

1. Immediately on admission. Start embassy verification of academic documents. Book the tuberculosis test at one of the four hospitals. Request the originals from your Korean university by post. If you graduated more than a year ago, begin obtaining your official graduation certificate now.
2. At the same time. Confirm you hold an account at an A-level bank with six months of deposit history. If not, this is the hard constraint, and it takes six months to fix.
3. Early and safely. Ward documents: family relationship certificate, marriage certificate. Six-month window.
4. Request from your consultancy. Their business registration certificate, notarised PAN and representative's passport copy.
5. Four to six weeks out. Notarised English translations of all Nepali-language documents. Sit your language test if you have not already. Write the SOP.
6. Three to four weeks out. Character certificates and any remaining general documents.
7. Last two weeks only. Balance certificate and the six-month bank statement. One-month validity.
8. Finally. Cover letter against the assembled file, page 5 signature, clip the originals, arrange in the published order.

The reasoning behind this sequence is set out in the validity clock section of the main guide.

Where D-2 applications come apart

A provisional graduation certificate more than a year after graduating. No alternative is accepted. The most common fatal defect on this route.

Academic documents not verified by the embassy, or verification started too late.

No tuberculosis appointment, because the four designated hospitals were booked out near the intake deadline.

Korean university documents submitted as scans. They must be originals.

A bank account that is not A-level, or without six months of history.

An expired bank statement — one month only, so request it last.

A template SOP that contradicts the transcript, or that a reviewer has seen before.

Missing consultancy documents, left blank rather than explained.

A professor's financial affidavit without the professor's job certificate, or the reverse.

Originals not clipped together, making it hard to see that the file is complete.

After the visa

A D-2 is a long-stay status, which means alien registration within the required window after arrival, and a set of practical tasks in the first month:

• Getting your Alien Registration Card in Korea — everything else depends on it
• National Health Insurance in Korea: what foreign residents pay and get — enrolment is not optional for long-stay students
• Jeonse, wolse and key money: Korean housing explained — if you are not in university accommodation
• Sending money from Korea to Nepal

On work: a student visa restricts employment, and permitted part-time work is subject to conditions and usually to your institution's approval. Do not assume it is open, and do not rely on income you are not yet permitted to earn. Korean visa types and immigration offices and overstay set out the boundaries, and extending your stay in Korea covers renewals.

For the rest of it: Nepali student life in Korea and the Nepali community in Korea, which covers the student associations and support centres most arrivals never find.

Questions people actually ask

I graduated three years ago and only have a provisional certificate. Then you need the official graduation certificate before you can apply. The one-year limit on provisional certificates follows Ministry of Justice guidelines and the list states that alternative documents will not be accepted. Start with your institution and the relevant board immediately — this is the longest item on your path.

Which language test should I take? The list accepts IELTS, TOEFL, CEFR, TEPS, TOPIK or a Sejong Institute result, so take whichever your university requires and you can sit soonest. If your programme is taught in Korean, TOPIK is the one that matters for the course as well as the visa. See TOPIK for Nepali students.

My university asked me to post the verified originals to them. What do I submit? The list covers this: you may submit photocopies where the verified documents have been sent to your university. Say so explicitly in your cover letter so that the photocopies are understood as the intended submission rather than an omission.

Can I use any hospital for the TB test if I pay privately? No. Only the four designated hospitals are accepted, and that restriction is the whole point of the requirement.

Do I need a marriage certificate if I am single? The marriage certificate is on the list, and the family relationship certificate establishes your family status. If you are unmarried, the family relationship certificate carries that; ask the embassy or your consultancy how they want the marriage certificate line handled rather than silently omitting it.

Is six months of bank history really required? The statement must cover the last six months and come from an A-level bank. A balance certificate alone does not satisfy it, and an account opened last month cannot produce a compliant statement at any balance.

I am applying without a consultancy. Raise it with the embassy. The consultancy documents are a required item on the list, and an unexplained blank reads as a missing document rather than as independence.

Sources and accuracy

Requirements above are drawn from the trilingual visa document lists published by DAGACHI and World DAGACHI at worlddagachi.com, working from the English versions.

The Embassy of the Republic of Korea in Nepal sets and changes these requirements without notice, and student routes change more often than most because they follow Ministry of Justice guidelines and university admission cycles. Confirm the current list before paying for verification, a medical or a language test, and check the date on this page. The designated hospital list in particular should be confirmed as current. Nothing here is legal, immigration or education advice.

If something here is out of date, tell us — applicants who have just been through the process are the fastest correction we get.