Skip to content
DAGACHIDAGACHINepal
Business newspaper article

Topic

Korea News

Korean news that affects foreign residents - immigration rules, wages, insurance, housing policy and benefits.

Guides
3
Photograph: AbsolutVision

Korean news filtered for foreign residents. Immigration, wages, insurance, housing and benefits - the areas where a change in Seoul changes your month.

What we cover

  • Immigration: visa conditions, extension requirements, points criteria, student work caps.
  • Wages and labour: the annual minimum wage, hours rules, enforcement.
  • Health insurance: enrolment rules and how premiums are assessed, which has changed more than once for foreign subscribers.
  • Housing: deposit protection, lease law, and anything affecting tenants.
  • Benefits and support: what foreign residents and multicultural families qualify for, which is less uniform than people assume.

Two things change every January

Worth a standing note. The minimum wage is reset annually, so any figure you are working from may be a year old. And insurance and tax thresholds commonly change at the same time.

Check the current number before accepting an offer or budgeting. Working and studying in Korea covers the wage floor, and health insurance enrolment covers premiums and why arrears reach your visa.

Where the changes usually land

In practice, changes that matter to foreign residents cluster in a few places.

Immigration adjusts extension requirements, points criteria and student work caps, and the published rule and the practice at a given office are not always identical. Health insurance has repeatedly changed how foreign subscribers are assessed. Labour resets the wage floor annually and adjusts hours enforcement by sector. Housing policy moves with the deposit-fraud problem, usually in tenants' favour.

What rarely changes, and is worth holding onto: the four major insurances, the severance entitlement after a year, and the fact that industrial accident cover protects an injured worker regardless of status. Your rights as a worker covers those.

Checking it yourself

For anything about your own status, the immigration contact centre on 1345 is free, multilingual and definitive, and a five-minute call beats a week of speculation. Immigration offices and overstay covers the helpline, and Korea is the written reference.