The problem is this. Your period of stay runs out in three weeks. You open the reservation calendar at your local immigration office and every date is grey. Nothing before your expiry date. Nothing at all, some weeks.
What the official page says is that if there is no date available before your period of stay expires, you go to the office without a reservation. Not "wait and try again at midnight". Not "pay someone to grab a slot". Just go, before the reporting period ends.
That single line is buried under a wall of warnings that people click past. This guide walks through the whole portal — what each menu actually does, what you can finish online, what genuinely requires standing in a building, and the four things the Ministry of Justice explicitly warns about on the booking page itself.
What HiKorea is, and what it is not
HiKorea is the Korean government's portal for foreigners who are already living here. It was built jointly by the Ministry of Justice and two other ministries, went live in August 2006, and got its second major build in February 2008. It handles residence: extensions, reporting, records, appointments.
It is not where you apply to come to Korea as a tourist. If you are still planning a trip, the two things you need are a K-ETA and an e-Arrival Card, and we have written about which of those you actually need and what each one costs in detail. The short version is below, because sending your case to the wrong site is the single most common wasted afternoon.
| Site | Who it is for | Fee | Timing |
|---|---|---|---|
| K-ETA | Nationals who may enter Korea without a visa, before travel | KRW 10,000 (about USD 7–8) | Normally reviewed within 72 hours |
| e-Arrival Card | Arriving travellers, replaces the paper card | Free | From 3 days before arrival |
| HiKorea | Foreigners already living in Korea | Varies by petition | Appointments, extensions, lookups |
The front page has five doors, and the useful things are not behind them
Open HiKorea in English and you get five large buttons: Reserve Visit, Petition Application, Smart Entry Service, Apply for a visa online, and Lodging Registration.
Those five cover the loud cases. The quiet ones — the lookups you actually need at 11pm when you cannot find your card — live two levels down in a menu called Information Lookup. Here is the whole map, so you stop hunting.
| Top menu | What lives under it |
|---|---|
| Petition Application | e-Application · Reserve Visit |
| Information Lookup | Enquiry submission result: e-Application · Reserve Visit · Confirmation of Visa Issuance · Refugee Appeal Application Other Services: Office Directory · Check Registration Card Validity · Report loss of residence card · Expiry Date check · Search Integrated Report of Change in Employment · Confirm e-Application Certificate Issuance |
| Smart Entry Service | SES information and eligibility · How to use the auto-gate · Centre locations · Mutual use with Korea-US SeS-GE, e-Channel, APC, e-Gate, EasyPASS |
| Information sharing corner | VISA NAVIGATOR · Living in Korea · Immigration/Stay Guide · Nationality/Naturalization Guide · Social Integration · Immigrant Investor · Investment · Employment Support |
| News & Announcements | Notice · Press release · Data Library · Application form · Newsletter |
Two of those deserve a note. Application form sits under News & Announcements, which is a strange place for it — that is where you download the paper forms before you go in. And the front page has a separate box called My Civil Petition Status that tracks e-Petition status, visa application results and reservation status without you digging through the menus.
Checking when your stay actually expires — no account needed
This is the lookup people search for most and it is easier than they expect. You do not need to log in. You do not need your residence card in your hand. You need your passport.
The path is Information Lookup → Other Services → Expiry Date check, and the form asks for exactly four things.
- Passport number — the one printed on the right side of the passport
- Nationality — as written on the first page of the passport
- Date of birth — eight characters, in the format 19701123
- The image code shown beside the box
Three notes are printed on that same page, and the third one surprises people:
- Keep your immigration certificate safe while you are in Korea.
- You must leave Korea within the permitted duration of stay.
- You are allowed to depart even if you have lost the certificate. It does not need to be reissued. If you do want it reissued, that goes through the Incheon Airport Immigration Service Center.
So losing the card does not trap you in the country. It is worth knowing before you panic and spend a week trying to get an appointment purely to fly home.
The same Other Services menu also holds Check Registration Card Validity and Report loss of residence card. I did not open those two pages, so I cannot tell you what they ask for — but they are there, in that menu, not somewhere more obvious.
There is one sentence on the HiKorea visit reservation page that almost nobody scrolls far enough to read, and it is the sentence that solves the problem most people arrive with.
Booking a visit: five things the guide page warns about
Before the reservation form opens, you have to tick a box saying you have read a page of warnings. Most people tick without reading. Here is what is actually on it.
1. The Ministry of Justice checks your IP address
The page states plainly that the Ministry plans to regularly check the internet IP of reservation applicants. Using someone else's personal information — a passport number, an alien registration number — to grab slots carries criminal penalties under the Personal Information Protection Act and the Criminal Act provisions on forgery or use of electronic records: up to five years of imprisonment, or a fine of up to 50 million KRW.
And if illegally pre-occupied reservations are not cancelled voluntarily, the reservation data — including IP address and log records — gets analysed and referred to the investigative authorities. If you have been offered a "reservation service" that somehow always has slots, that is what it is built on.
2. Bring the receipt if you just paid health insurance arrears
A specific and easily missed one. If you paid overdue health insurance premiums within the last 5 days through a utility bill payment machine or through Internet Giro, bring the receipt with you. The system may not show the payment yet.
3. Book a date before your stay expires, not after
The reservation calendar will happily show you dates after your expiry date. Taking one does not protect you. The page says visiting after the expiry of your period of stay, or after the statutory reporting period, may bring a penalty or a fine.
4. If there is no slot before that date, go anyway
This is the sentence from the opening. In the page's own words: if there is no date available for reservation within the expiration date of the period of stay or within the statutory reporting period, visit a jurisdictional immigration office before the reporting period ends.
The office directory is under Information Lookup → Other Services. Find the office with jurisdiction over where you live, and go.
5. A reservation is an appointment, not a filing
Stated directly: applying for a visit reservation is "merely an act of making an appointment to visit an immigration office for the date, and does not mean a 'receipt of your petition'."
Holding a reservation for next month does not mean your extension is in progress. Nothing has been submitted. The clock on your stay keeps running exactly as before.
One last practical detail: the booking page offers two buttons at the bottom — Visit Reservation Application (Member) and Visit Reservation Application (Non-member). You do not need an account to book.
What you can file without going anywhere
HiKorea's own description of its e-Application service lists these Ministry of Justice petitions:
- Reserve appointment
- Re-entry permit
- Extension of stay (short-term visit)
- Extension of stay (registered foreigners)
- Extension of stay (departure of registered foreigners)
- Notification of changes in foreign employees or trainees
- Notification of employment or change of workplace, for Working Visit (H-2) holders
There is a second block of Ministry of Labor items covering recruitment permits, changes in recruitment, planned departure notifications and workplace changes for foreign workers.
The useful thing here is what is absent. Alien registration itself — getting the card in the first place — is not on that list. Extension of stay is. That is roughly where the line falls between "finish it at home" and "book a visit".
One caveat, and it matters. That description page is old text: it names ministries under their former titles and its history section stops in 2008. Treat the list as a guide to scope, not as a definitive current menu. Check the live e-Application screen for what your specific status can file.
If a website asks you to pay for the arrival card, close it
HiKorea's own front page currently carries a banner about this, and it is worth repeating exactly. Fake sites impersonating the official e-Arrival Card service have been found. The only official site is e-arrivalcard.go.kr, and the e-Arrival Card is free of charge. The Korean version of the same notice adds the cleaner test: a site that asks for your payment information is not the official service.
K-ETA carries a matching warning. Applications are accepted only at k-eta.go.kr or the official K-ETA mobile app, and the site warns about agency and phishing sites charging inflated fees for what is a KRW 10,000 application.
Between the two of them: one of these services is free and one costs about seven dollars. Anything charging thirty, fifty or eighty is not the government.
When you need an actual person
The Immigration Contact Center is 1345, dialled without an area code from inside Korea. From abroad it is +82-2-1345, or +82-2-6908-1345~6.
The English FAQ page on HiKorea lists thirteen good questions — whether a reservation is required, whether an extension needs an in-person visit, when the extension window opens, whether an F-5 permanent resident still needs to extend. Worth knowing that these are recognised as the common questions. In practice, though, the answers render blank on the English page. I opened four of them and each one expanded to an empty box. So 1345 is not a fallback here, it is the route.
What I could not check
Being straight about the gaps, because immigration deadlines are not a good place to guess.
The statutory numbers people usually want alongside this — the deadline for registering as a foreign resident after arrival, the window for reporting a change of address, how far ahead of expiry an extension can be filed, and the exact fees — are set in the Immigration Act and its enforcement rules. The government's plain-language law portal would not load for me, so I have not verified those figures and I am not going to print numbers I could not confirm. Get them from 1345 or from the Immigration/Stay Guide inside HiKorea, and take the version that comes with a date on it.
What is verified above is what is currently on the HiKorea, e-Arrival Card and K-ETA sites themselves.
The short version
- No slot before your stay expires? Go to your jurisdictional office without one, before the reporting period ends. The official page says so.
- A reservation is an appointment, not a filing. Nothing is submitted until you are there.
- Expiry Date check needs only a passport number, nationality and date of birth. No login.
- Losing your residence card does not stop you leaving the country.
- Extension of stay can be filed online. First registration cannot.
- Using someone else's details to grab a booking is a criminal matter, and IP addresses are checked.
- The e-Arrival Card is free. Any site charging for it is not the government.
If you are still working out the trip rather than the paperwork, we have also written about studying in South Korea and what the official numbers say, about how money actually works here for cards, cash and transit, and about the Seoul subway rules that decide what your travel costs.
OFFICIAL SITE — HiKorea, e-Government for Foreigners
Sources
- HiKorea (e-Government for Foreigners), English site — front page menu structure, service map, Immigration Contact Center numbers
- HiKorea, "How to use Visit Reservation" guide page — IP checking, criminal penalties, health insurance receipt note, expiry-date rule, the no-slot instruction, and the statement that a reservation is not a receipt of petition
- HiKorea, "Expiry Date check" — required fields and the notes on lost certificates
- HiKorea, "Introduction to Hi Korea" — service history and the e-Application service list
- e-Arrival Card official site and HiKorea front-page notice — official domain, no fee, filing window before arrival
- K-ETA official site — fee, review time, and the warning about agency and phishing sites
Checked 18 August 2026 on the official sites listed above. Menu structures and service lists change; confirm on the live site before you rely on any single path. Statutory deadlines and fees are deliberately not quoted here because they could not be verified against the law portal on the day of writing.
