South Korea: Renewing Your E2 Visa Online

Are you a public school teacher renewing with the same school? Then this list applies to you.

Documents:

• Passport Scan
• Signed Contract
• School Business Certificate (고유번호증/사업자등록증)
• School ID 고유번호증
  • Obtain this from your school administration (행정실).
• Proof of Employment (재직증명서)
  • Obtain this from your school administration (행정실).
• School Teaching Timetable (수업시간표)
  • Request this from your co-teacher or make one yourself.
  • Note: this does not need to be stamped by your school but YMMV.
• Proof of Income (소득금액증명원) for the previous year
  • Obtain this from Hometax.
• Income Withholding Receipt (근로소득원천징수부) for the previous year
  • Obtain this from Hometax, NEIS, or your administration office; if you are applying for renewal early in the year, Hometax will not have these documents ready and instead you can ask the 행정실 staff for last year’s receipt or print it from NEIS.
• Annual Income Report (외국인 직업 및 연간 소득금액 신고서)
  • Obtain this from the HiKorea website: HiKorea Homepage> News & Announcements > Application Form.
  • Fill this form in yourself, print, sign, and scan.
• Advance Notice of Expiration of Stay (immigration notice sent to your house) OR other mail with your name PLUS
  • Signed Confirmation Letter of Accommodation Residency (거주/숙소제공동의서)
    • Photocopy of Accommodation Lease Contract (숙소임대차계약서 사본)
  • Note: 1345 told me I only needed the advance notice but local immigration officers asked me to upload additional proof of housing in the latter two forms.
• 50,000 won (via electronic payment)

Thanks to bita500 on Reddit for the bulk of this list.

Online Application

Go to hikorea.go.kr and hover over “Petition Application”. Choose “e-Application” and then “Extension of stay for registered foreigners”. Follow the prompts and upload scans of the aforementioned documents.

All documents should be under 1024 KB. You can accomplish this by printing the PDF to a lower quality PDF under print options or using an online file compressor.

The online application costs 50,000 won which you will be prompted to pay upon submitting your application.

Immigration will send you an email and text message to let you know if you need to refile with supplemental documents or if you have been rejected. You will also receive an email and text when your application has been registered and approved.

Once approved, you can print confirmation from your HiKorea account: Homepage > Information Lookup > Enquiry Submission Result: e-Application.

For detailed help on applying for E2 visa renewal online, watch this video.

Updating Your ARC

If you want to update your ARC with the new visa expiry dates, you may go to the local immigration office without an appointment. Take your ARC and printed confirmation. Someone at the information desk will guide you to the appropriate booth where an officer will immediately add the new dates to your ARC at no extra charge.

E2-1 versus E2-2 Updates

At the time of writing this, immigration has decided to further split our E2 visas. Some public school teachers who were previously E2-2 are now classified as E2-1, which requires resubmission of the following documents: criminal background check from your home country and your diploma.

The purpose of the new rule is to move all documents from your school’s hands to immigration.

If your first teaching position in Korea was through EPIK, you remain classified as an E2-2.

If you obtained a public school teaching position through a recruiter or local Office of Education, you have been reclassified as an E2-1 and will need to get your apostilled diploma and background check from your school.

The diploma and background check can be obtained from the 교무실 office. After you obtain the original documents, you will need to go to the 행정실 to get both stamped.

You may not be able to renew online if this is your case but instead must go to immigration in person to hand over these documents.

For this reason, many local offices of education that previously hired through recruiters are now going exclusivly through EPIK to avoid the continual headache of reissuing specialized visa numbers.

For questions about your classification, contact 1345.