Extending your stay in Korea: the window, the day count and the documents

1. What an extension window is

A foreign national in Korea may stay within the status and the period written on the alien registration card. To stay longer under the same status, you apply for a period extension before the period ends. The permission is given by the Minister of Justice through your local immigration office, and the application can be filed at the office or online through Hi Korea.

The statute only says the application must be made before expiry. The practical window comes from the immigration service's own guidance: applications are accepted from four months before the expiry date until the expiry date itself. Hi Korea and the Government 24 foreigner portal both state this figure, and this page quotes both.

Applying after the expiry date is a different situation. The guidance says a penalty fine is imposed, and the Act treats staying past the period without permission as an offence. Those facts appear once on the home page, next to the clause numbers, and nowhere else. This page is here to make the window visible early, not to alarm anyone.

2. The basic rules

Six statuses are covered here because their holders file for themselves: D-2 (student), D-4 (general training, including language courses), E-2 (foreign language instructor), F-2 (resident), F-4 (overseas Korean) and F-6 (marriage migrant). Other statuses are left out on purpose. E-9 extensions are filed by the employer, E-8 has a fixed eight-month term, F-3 depends on the principal holder, and F-5 has no period to extend.

The documents for an extension are listed in Annex 5-2 of the Enforcement Rules, in the column for period extension under each status. Every applicant also brings the integrated application form (Form 34), passport, alien registration card and proof of address, and pays the fee, which is 60,000 won for most statuses and 30,000 won for F-6.

Annex 1 of the same Rules sets the maximum period a single permit can give: two years for D-2, D-4 and E-2, five years for F-2, three years for F-4 and F-6. The office may grant less. The annex also notes the Minister may exceed these limits when needed.

3. The rules inside this page

You choose one of the six statuses and enter the expiry date. The window's opening day is the same day of the month four months earlier. If that day does not exist in that month, the last day of the month is used, so 30 June gives 28 February in an ordinary year and 29 February in a leap year. The closing day is the expiry date itself.

The page then shows which of four states you are in: the window has not opened, the window is open, today is the expiry date, or the expiry date has passed. In the first two it shows how many days remain until the window opens or until it closes. The number is plain text. There is no colour that turns red and no countdown animation.

The checklist is built from Annex 5-2 and the common items. Ticks are saved in this browser under the status code, so they are still there when you come back on the same device. Nothing else is saved. The expiry date is not stored; it lives only in the address bar, which is what lets you bookmark the page or send it to someone.

The calendar button writes a standard .ics file with two all-day events, the opening day and the expiry date, and hands it to your browser as a download. Your calendar app then keeps the dates and rings whatever alert you set there. This site sends no notifications and asks for no permission to do so.

If you choose a status outside the six, the page says so and links to Hi Korea. It does not guess a window for a status it does not cover.

Nothing you type goes to a server. The server learns only that the page was opened, that a window was computed once, that a calendar file was downloaded, that a checklist was completed, and that a link was copied. It never receives the date or the status.

4. Getting it right

Read the expiry date from the card, not from memory. The permitted period on the card is the one the office counts. If you have an older permit sticker in your passport with a different date, the card is the newer one.

Tick the checklist as you gather the papers, and read the Korean wording under each item. That is the wording the counter staff use, and having it on your phone makes the conversation shorter.

Hi Korea lets you file online for many cases, and it also takes visit reservations. Filing early in the window leaves time to bring a missing document without going past the expiry date.

5. A little deeper

The conditions in Annex 5-2 refer to categories of the status, written as ga, na, cha and so on. For F-2 and F-6 these categories come from Annex 1-2 of the Enforcement Decree, which defines who holds each status. The checklist shows the Korean condition text as written, with a short English gloss, so you can match your own category.

For F-4, the first extension has an extra item: a family register showing the renunciation or loss of Korean nationality. Men aged 18 to 38 applying for a first extension may also need to show that nationality was not given up to avoid military service, unless service was completed or exempted.

Annex 5-2 opens with general notes: documents the officer can verify through shared government records need not be attached, documents issued abroad need an apostille or consular confirmation, and the office may add or remove items in individual cases. The list on this page is therefore a starting point, not the final word.

The four-month window is guidance, not statute. If your office tells you a different opening day, or accepts an application earlier for a stated reason, follow the office.

6. Where people get stuck

The window has not opened yet and the office turns the application away. That is normal. Come back on the opening day shown here.

The expiry date has passed. This page cannot help with that case, and it does not pretend to. The guidance says a fine applies, and the office decides what happens next. Call 1345 or go to the office as soon as you can.

Your status is not among the six. The rules for it may differ in who files and how long the term is, so this page declines rather than guess. Hi Korea has the manual for every status.

The document list seems short. That is because the annex lists only the extension-specific items, and the common items are shown separately above them. The office may still ask for more, and the annex says so.