About Korea Life Admin

Who runs this site, how it is funded, and what it will and will not tell you.

Last updated — 24 July 2026

Korea Life Admin is an independent, English-language publication covering the administrative side of living in South Korea: residence registration, banking, housing contracts, health insurance, taxation and visa procedures.

It is written and maintained by one person: an employer in Chungcheong who has hired foreign workers for ten years, in a family business that has done so for twenty. There is no editorial team, no agency behind it, and no government involvement. When a guide says "I", it means the person who runs the site.

Why it exists

The information foreign residents need in Korea is not secret. It is published, in Korean, across a dozen different agency websites, each written for readers who already have a resident registration number and already know which department they belong to.

What is missing is the operational layer: which counter, what to bring, how far ahead to book, what the officer will ask that is not on the checklist, and what happens if you get it wrong. That layer usually lives in expat group chats and disappears within a week. This site writes it down and keeps it current.

How guides are researched

Every guide is built in the same order:

• The governing rule is read at its source — the ministry, agency or office that issues the document.
• The procedure is done, or observed being done, in person where possible.
• The guide records the date it was verified and the office it was verified against.
• Where outcomes vary by visa category, nationality or district, the guide states the variation instead of picking one answer.

The working and labour procedures are ones I have handled repeatedly, at Daejeon Immigration Office and the employment centre, on behalf of employees. The marriage, study and housing guides are not mine by experience, and they say so: each names what it is based on and carries a reference-draft status until it has been checked at a counter. I would rather publish a guide that admits its limits than one that sounds confident and sends you to the wrong counter.

Corrections

Rules change, and offices interpret them differently. Every guide carries a correction log at the foot of the page: what changed, when, and what the previous wording said. Nothing is silently edited.

If an office told you something that contradicts a guide here, please send it in. Reader field reports are checked and, where confirmed, published with the correction.

How the site is funded

Korea Life Admin is funded by display advertising. Advertisements are labelled and are served by third-party networks; the site has no control over which specific advertisers appear and does not endorse them. Advertising has no influence on which procedures are covered or what the guides say.

If affiliate links are ever used, they will be disclosed on the page where they appear, before the link. As of the date above, the site carries none.

What this site is not

Contact

Corrections, field reports and questions: hello@korealifeadmin.com. See the contact page for what to include so a reply is actually useful.