Family and Dependant Visas

If you hold a work or study status in Korea, your spouse and children can usually join you. The limitation to understand before anyone books a flight: a dependant visa generally does not permit the holder to work.

That single fact is the most common unpleasant surprise for couples moving here, and it is entirely avoidable if you plan around it. Marriage to a Korean national is a different route with different rules, and that is at marrying a Korean national.

The categories

Code	For	Work
F-3	Spouse and minor children of many work and study status holders	No
F-1	Various family and other circumstances, including some carers and relatives	Generally no, with exceptions
F-2	Longer-term residence in your own right, including the points route	Broadly yes
F-5	Permanent residence	Yes

F-3 is the one most families use. It is granted on the basis of the principal holder's status, so its validity tracks theirs - if the principal's visa is extended, the dependants' are extended with it, and if the principal's status ends, so does the family's.

Which categories permit dependants depends on the principal's status. Most professional and study categories do. Some employment categories do not, which is a hard constraint worth checking before you accept a job rather than afterwards. Korean visa types covers the categories, and employer-sponsored work visas covers the sponsorship side.

What you have to prove

Mostly the relationship, and that you can support the family:

• Marriage certificate and birth certificates, authenticated and translated. The chain starts in the issuing country.
• The principal's status documents: residence card, contract or certificate of enrolment.
• Evidence of income or funds sufficient for the household.
• Housing, usually a lease.

Order several certified copies of the civil documents while you are having them legalised. You will need them again at renewals, for school enrolment, and for health insurance dependants. Family administration covers the certificates.

The work problem, and the ways round it

A spouse on F-3 who intends to earn has three realistic options, and all of them take planning:

Get their own qualifying status. If they have a degree and a prospective employer, an employer-sponsored work visa is a change of status rather than a new entry in many cases. This is the cleanest answer.

Apply for specific permission. There are circumstances in which a dependant may be permitted to undertake defined activity, but it is a permission to apply for, not a right, and it is narrower than people hope. Ask the immigration helpline on 1345 about your exact situation before assuming either way.

Move the principal onto a status whose family provisions are better. The points-based residence route improves the whole household's position, which is one of the strongest arguments for pursuing it. Long-term residence covers it.

What is not an option is working anyway. Unpermitted work risks the status of the person doing it and can affect the principal's position too, which makes it a family-level risk rather than an individual one.

Children on a dependant visa

Minor children are included, and two things follow that matter more than the visa itself.

They can attend local public school, and admission does not depend on the parents' immigration status being in order. Instruction is in Korean, with support programmes for children arriving without it. Children's education covers enrolment and the alternatives.

They should be registered with your own embassy as well as held on the Korean record, so their nationality and passport are established. Korea passes nationality by descent rather than place of birth, so a child born here to two foreign parents does not become Korean.

Children age out of dependant status, so a child approaching adulthood needs their own basis - usually a study status - planned a year ahead rather than discovered at a renewal.

Health insurance

A qualifying dependant can generally be registered on the principal's national health insurance rather than paying a separate premium, provided the relationship and income conditions are met.

This is worth doing promptly, because the alternative is either an unnecessary second premium or an uninsured family member. The documents are the same authenticated certificates. Health insurance enrolment covers dependants.

Getting them here, in order

The sequence matters, because several steps depend on the one before:

1. You establish your own status and collect your residence card. Dependants are granted on the basis of yours, so this comes first.
2. Legalise the marriage and birth certificates in the country that issued them, with spare copies.
3. Apply - either the family applies at a Korean mission abroad, or, if they are already in Korea on a short-stay permission, a change of status may be possible depending on the circumstances.
4. They arrive and register within 90 days, and collect their own residence cards.
5. Register them as health insurance dependants, and report the household address.
6. Enrol children in school, which has its own deadlines around the March academic year.

Trying to compress this by having family arrive on a short-stay visa and convert afterwards is the common shortcut, and it does not reliably work. The residence card covers registration, and children's education covers the school timing.

Renewals

Family members renew alongside the principal, and the same things that sink the principal's extension sink the family's: unpaid health insurance premiums, tax arrears, an unreported address change.

Keep one household folder with everyone's documents, and put the premiums on automatic debit. Extending your stay in Korea covers the refusal causes.

Where this goes wrong

• Assuming a dependant visa permits work. It generally does not.
• Accepting a job whose category does not allow dependants at all.
• Starting document legalisation late. It is always the long pole.
• A spouse working without permission. It risks both statuses.
• Not registering dependants on health insurance and paying twice.
• A child ageing out of dependant status with no plan in place.

Where to go next

Marrying a Korean national covers the F-6 route, which is far less restricted, and family life in Korea covers settling in as a household.