Korea, Verified

Arriving in Korea, in order

Every step below is a decision a traveller makes before or just after landing, in the order it comes up. Where a step has been checked against the Korean source that sets the rule, it carries the date of that check. Where it has not been written yet, it says so rather than pretending the site is complete.

10 of 11 steps covered so far. The gaps are the publishing plan.

  1. Before booking

    Do you need a visa at all?

    The answer is set by your passport, not by your destination, and most English guides quietly assume the reader holds one of the visa-free ones. Where the answer is yes, it is worth knowing what it rests on, because a treaty and a reciprocal measure move in different ways. Jeju runs a separate scheme of its own, with its own limits, and so does passing through on the way somewhere else.

  2. Before flying

    Travel authorisation (K-ETA)

    Visa-free does not mean nothing to file. A large group of nationalities is inside a temporary exemption that runs to the end of 2026, which sounds like good news and creates a problem at the next step. Whether you are in that group depends on which of the government’s own pages you read.

  3. Before landing

    The arrival card

    The paper landing card moved online. Whether you file one depends on a rule that runs backwards from what most travellers expect.

  4. On landing

    Customs

    Most arrivals declare nothing and file nothing. Over the allowance, declaring is the cheaper way to pay, and tobacco comes with a one-type rule the English page leaves out. Medicine counts inside the same allowance, and sleeping pills need a permit before you fly.

  5. On landing

    Getting out of the airport

    Train, limousine bus or taxi, with the last departure times that English pages routinely get wrong, and the age-based free travel nobody writes about in English. Landing at Gimpo instead, the answer is a subway platform, and the airport’s own bus page is out of date.

  6. First hour

    Getting online

    The real question is not speed or price. It is whether you need a Korean phone number, because a data-only eSIM locks you out of the apps you came expecting to use.

  7. First day

    Paying for transport

    Cash and card cost the same on a Seoul bus. The card earns its place through transfers, and one of the passes every guide recommends is being withdrawn. What replaces it is a residency check, so the answer for a visitor is not the obvious one, and from September it also depends on which city you are registered in and whether you are 19. If you live here and used the withdrawn pass, it pays a refund on the way out, claimed on paper if you are a foreign resident. Paying for any of it with a card you brought with you depends on which machine you are standing at, and on a top-up rule that turns out to catch Korean cards too.

  8. First day

    Paying for everything else

    Away from the transport machines, a foreign card still fails in specific places: some restaurant ordering kiosks, older taxis, and a few unattended terminals.

    Not written yet. The transport half is covered in the step above, from the operator’s own published rules. This half is individual merchants and terminals rather than one operator with a notice, so it needs its own evidence rather than anecdote.

  9. Mid-trip

    Moving between airports and terminals

    People book connections that are not physically possible. Which crossing is even open to you is decided by your boarding pass and your suitcase, the free bus runs one way per route, and the two operators do not agree on the train fare.

  10. If it goes wrong

    Help that answers in English

    Which emergency and information numbers have interpreters, at what hours, and what actually happens when you call one.

  11. On the way out

    Tax refund

    The in-store immediate refund and the airport kiosk are two different systems with different limits. Most guides describe one and call it the process.

Also on the site

Everything here is checked against the body that sets the rule, in Korean, and anything that could not be confirmed is labelled as unconfirmed in the article itself. The method is on How we check. If a step is wrong or missing, tell us.