🇯🇵 Japan vs 🇰🇷 South Korea: Digital Nomad Visa Compared

Japan offers Designated Activities (Digital Nomad) - Notice No. 53. South Korea offers Digital Nomad (Workation) Visa - F-1-D. Every figure below comes from each country's own sourced, dated fiche - compare income, duration, tax, family rules, fees and processing time before you decide. South Korea's initial visa period runs longer than Japan's: 12 months versus 6.

🇯🇵 Japan🇰🇷 South Korea

Minimum income

10,000,000 JPY / year

Attributed to MFA/ISA (pages not fetched directly). Income must be from outside Japan; work for Japan-based entities is not allowed.

source · verified 2026-07-05

105,000,000 KRW / year

Per the 2026-07-07 Ministry of Justice announcement (visa relaunched as permanent 2026-06-30, replacing the pilot's flat 2x-GNI rule with this tiered formula). The rule is denominated in WON, not dollars: it keys off the Bank of Korea's published prior-year per-capita GNI (KRW 52.41 million for 2025), so 2x = ~KRW 105 million and the relaxed tier = ~KRW 52.4 million. This resolves the USD 65,800-vs-73,926 split tracked here since 2026-07-29: both were conversions of the SAME KRW 105 million rule at different exchange rates (~1,596 and ~1,420 KRW/USD respectively), not competing thresholds - which is why neither could ever be sourced to a distinct official figure. Publishing the won amount removes that FX artifact; any dollar equivalent drifts with the rate (the site's own FX table, used only by the eligibility shortlister, was itself found stale during this same pass and refreshed - see lib/matcher.ts). RE-CHECKED 2026-08-03/05: Korea Herald's post-launch visa Q&A independently corroborates a third tier - ages 18-34 intending to live in Greater Seoul need 1.5x GNI (~KRW 78.6 million) - and notes holders who relocate into Greater Seoul after approval must meet the higher threshold at renewal or move back out within 6 months. Not marked 'official' - hikorea.go.kr, immigration.go.kr and mofa.go.kr all still 403 on direct fetch, so no primary Korean-government page has been read. The full official multiplier table for other intermediate age/region combinations remains unpublished anywhere found - treat the three tiers above as the load-bearing ones, not a complete table.

source · verified 2026-08-06

Visa duration

6 months

6 months, NON-renewable. A stay under 6 months generally keeps you a non-tax-resident of Japan.

source · verified 2026-07-05

12 months, renewable

1-year initial grant, renewable annually, extended from a 2-year to a 3-year total cap per a 2026-07-07 Ministry of Justice announcement - corroborated across 5+ independent secondary sources (incl. a EY Global tax alert and an immigration law firm), not yet read on an official Korean government page directly (hikorea.go.kr/immigration.go.kr/mofa.go.kr all 403 on direct fetch).

source · verified 2026-07-25

Tax regime

A stay of 6 months (under 183 days) generally does not make you a Japanese tax resident, so foreign income is not taxed by Japan under the visa.

General rule tied to the 6-month cap; confirm your own residency position.

source · verified 2026-07-05

Remote income earned for a non-Korean employer or client - the only kind the F-1-D visa permits - is not taxed by Korea for the common case (physical presence under 183 days/year). Employees who do qualify as tax resident can elect an optional 19% flat tax rate instead of Korea's progressive brackets; freelancers and sole proprietors are not eligible for that flat rate.

Multiple independent tax-focused outlets (Greenback Tax Services, Bright!Tax, krinsider, Nomad Tax Guide) converge on Korea not taxing foreign-sourced remote income while the visa's own ban on Korean employers holds. Several of the same sources flag that guidance on the >183-day resident-status threshold is still evolving/unsettled - noted here rather than presented as resolved. Not marked 'official': hikorea.go.kr/immigration.go.kr/mofa.go.kr still unreachable on direct fetch, so this is search-result-synthesized secondary reporting, not a primary Korean-government page read.

source · verified 2026-08-16

Family (spouse / children)

Spouse + children admitted

Spouse or child of a digital nomad may accompany under the same Designated Activities category.

source · verified 2026-07-05

Spouse + children admitted

Independent secondary coverage (Y-Axis, Bright!Tax, VisasUpdate, SharedHomies, Trenity Consultants) consistently reports that a spouse and minor children may accompany the primary F-1-D applicant as dependents, that only the primary applicant must meet the income threshold (dependents are not separately income-tested), that dependents cannot work in Korea, and that each dependent needs their own private health insurance. No source reports a distinct per-dependent income uplift for this program, so upliftPerDependent is left unset rather than guessed. Not marked 'official' - hikorea.go.kr/immigration.go.kr/mofa.go.kr still unreachable on direct fetch.

source · verified 2026-08-16

Application fees

15,000 JPY

Japan's general visa issuance fee rose from JPY 3,000 to JPY 15,000 (single-entry) effective 2026-07-01 - the first revision since 1978. A consulate Digital Nomad checklist states the visa follows the general single-entry fee schedule. RE-CHECKED 2026-07-15: a search-indexed snippet of this exact MOFA fee page now corroborates "approximately 15,000 yen for a single-entry visa," but the live page still could not be fetched directly this pass either, so confidence stays "reported" pending an on-page read.

source · verified 2026-07-15

90 USD

USD 90 for the initial 1-year multiple-entry visa application, plus 60,000 KRW (~USD 41) per annual extension up to the 3-year total cap. Three independent secondary sources converge on this figure (Korea Herald's post-launch visa Q&A, an EY Global tax alert, an Envoy Global news alert), replacing the previously-scattered range (~USD 45-100 depending on nationality/fee type) - a materially more specific and better-corroborated figure than before. Not marked 'official' - hikorea.go.kr/immigration.go.kr/mofa.go.kr still 403 on direct fetch, so no primary Korean-government page has been read; by-nationality fee variance may still apply and is not ruled out. RE-CHECKED 2026-08-19: no comprehensive by-nationality fee table found this pass either - the general pattern (USD 90 default; USD 45 flat reciprocity fee applying to ALL Korean visa categories for US nationals, not F-1-D-specific; CAD 121.50 via the Canada consulate's F-1-D page) is reconfirmed, not contradicted. No material change.

source · verified 2026-08-06

Health insurance

Required - Private health insurance covering the full 6-month stay with medical coverage of JPY 10 million or more.

source · verified 2026-07-05

Required - Private health insurance covering medical treatment AND repatriation, minimum KRW 100,000,000 (~USD 75,000-76,000) coverage, for the full duration of stay.

Graduates out of TBD this pass: the KRW 100,000,000 figure, previously only a search-snippet-level lead, is now traceable to a consulate-level MOFA page (Consulate General of the Republic of Korea in Seattle, F-1-D program page) plus 5+ independent secondary guides (Seoulstart, HaniSeoul, krinsider, koreaplus-lifes, americanvisitorinsurance.com) converging on the same figure for medical treatment AND repatriation - several sources warn 'repatriation' must be explicitly named on the policy or the application is rejected. Not marked 'official' - hikorea.go.kr/immigration.go.kr/mofa.go.kr root pages remain 403 on direct fetch, so this rests on a consulate sub-page plus secondary corroboration, not a primary ministry page read.

source · verified 2026-08-19

Processing time

Reported ~5 business days when applying with a Certificate of Eligibility (COE); 2 weeks to 1 month without one

No single canonical MOFA-stated figure found; based on convergent consulate guidance (Chicago, San Francisco, Los Angeles). Confirm with your consulate. RE-CHECKED 2026-08-04: mofa.go.jp and moj.go.jp/isa still 403 on direct fetch. No source dated after the prior pass changes income, duration, tax, fees or processing time - all reconfirmed by convergent 2026 guides. No material change. RE-CHECKED 2026-08-11: the JPY 3,000-to-15,000 fee rise (2026-07-01) is now strongly corroborated by mainstream press (Japan Times, CNBC, Nippon.com, Euronews, all dated mid-to-late June 2026) rather than only consulate-checklist sourcing - confidence strengthened, figure unchanged. Income, duration and processing time all reconfirmed. No material change.

source · verified 2026-07-12

TBD

Figures marked TBD are not yet verified and are never shown as facts. Last full review: Japan 2026-09-15, South Korea 2026-09-15.