South Korea Visa Cost Calculator

The tourist category is South Korea's workhorse: single entry for tourism or family visits, and it comes with no consular fee attached. Multi-entry for South Korea suits anyone whose trip is really two trips — one border hop in the middle changes the logistics, not the fee. Work-adjacent travel — meetings, contract negotiation, site visits — falls under South Korea's business category, fee-exempt like the rest and evidenced with a host letter.

A short South Korea layover — typically 24–72 hours — legalises itself under transit exemptions for most passports, without an application behind it. Fee-exempt does not mean cost-free at the margins: budget for passport photos and, if you use one, a filing agent's service charge for South Korea.

Paperwork comes before payment: passport with 6+ months' validity, a recent photo, South Korea accommodation confirmations, and bank statements. Even the simplest route wants the core kit in digital form: South Korea's online portal takes the same documents a consulate would, as scans instead of paper. Payment timing is one step you can skip — South Korea's fee-exempt entry means the only receipts belong to photos and, where one exists, transport to an application centre.

Expect silence rather than updates: South Korea rarely confirms receipt mid-review, so screenshot every submission page as you go. Late bookers pay the express premium — half as much again on the fee to compress South Korea's decision from weeks to days.

The passport rules are absolute — 6 months' validity beyond your South Korea exit date and two clean pages for the visa itself. Photos fail applications quietly: print two spares, keep the digital originals, and use a likeness from the last six months for South Korea's file. Three months of statements demonstrating $50–100 per day is the funds benchmark for South Korea; scrub nothing, redact nothing.

Hotel bookings and the return ticket close the loop; South Korea cross-checks the dates across all of them. Business applicants add the South Korea host company's invitation; transit applicants add the confirmed onward ticket — those two categories fail on missing paperwork more than fee errors.

Count on one to three weeks in the standard queue; South Korea publishes business-day estimates that exclude weekends and local holidays. The rush option converts South Korea's weeks-long queue into days at no premium: fee-exempt entry has no 50% uplift to calculate. Incomplete files, not bad histories, cause the bulk of South Korea rejections — one missing night of lodging is enough.

Fix-then-refile is the normal path after a South Korea denial; the fee is due again, so get the file right the second time. Track South Korea's eVisa status page rather than your inbox; approval notices land in the portal first and the email second.