Bringing in family, or need a longer-term residence status?

Beyond the F-4 overseas-Korean status covered on our nationality-recovery page, Korea's F-series covers marriage immigration, permanent residency, and several point-based and regional residence tracks — each with its own income table, language requirement, and document set that catches people unprepared.

F-6 marriage immigration visa

Three subtypes: F-6-1 (spouse of a Korean national in a genuine ongoing marriage), F-6-2 (foreign parent raising a Korean national's minor child), F-6-3 (marriage breakdown — divorce/death where the foreign spouse retains custody or fault lies with the Korean spouse).

F-6-1 invitation requires:

• Sponsor income ≥ KRW 23,595,948/yr for a 2-person household (rising to ~₩53.9M for 7 people, +₩5.54M per extra person) — includes wage/business/rental/interest/pension income from the past year, 5% of qualifying assets held 6+ months, and health-insurance-premium-based income imputation; waived entirely if the couple already has a child together or lived abroad together 1+ year with no Korean income.
• Foreign spouse's Korean ability — TOPIK level 1+, 120 hours of KIIP/Sejong Institute beginner coursework, or Social Integration Program (KIIP) stage 2+ — waived if there's a child together, the spouse already lived in Korea 1+ year, or several other listed exceptions.
• Genuine-marriage evidence — courtship history, message/SNS records, wedding photos, family-visit photos.

F-5 permanent residency

The most stable status Korea's immigration law offers — no stay-period limit (no renewal needed), re-entry permit waived for absences under 2 years, voting rights after 3 years, and near-immunity from deportation except for the most serious offenses. F-5 comes in 27 subtypes depending on the visa held immediately before applying, each with its own specific eligibility path.

General requirements: a livelihood/income test (typically 1–2x the prior year's per-capita GNI, or a qualifying asset held 6+ months — ₩15M for the applicant alone or ₩30M combined with dependents for several subtypes), a "basic ability" civic/language component, and a clean conduct record. The permanent-residency card itself is valid 10 years and must be renewed before expiry (a fine applies for late renewal) — the underlying F-5 status itself does not expire. Revocation grounds include deportation orders, fraudulent applications, and prison sentences over certain thresholds within the prior 5 years.

F-2 residence visas — three tracks worth knowing about

• F-2-7 (point-based residence) — 80+ points on the Ministry of Justice's evaluation table (listed-company/professional employees, emerging-industry workers, D-5–D-9/E-1–E-7-1 professionals with 3 years' legal stay, advanced-degree graduates, or STEM PhD "potential talent"). Grants 1–5 years of stay depending on score/income tier (130+ points or ₩60M+ income = 5 years, down to 80–109 points or ₩30M+ = 1 year), unrestricted work and business activity, and lets the visa holder's spouse and minor children move to F-2-71/F-3-18 dependent status.
• F-2-99 — for long-stay D-1/D-5–D-9/E-1–E-7 holders (and F-1 in narrow cases) with 5+ years continuous residence in Korea, no job-category restriction (unlike most other status). Popular with E-7 holders precisely because most E-7 subtypes (E-7-2 through E-7-4) cannot convert directly to F-2-7, leaving F-2-99 as their practical upgrade path. Requires an asset test (₩15M solo / ₩30M combined with dependents) and an income test (annual minimum wage × 12, or × 18 for certain E-7 employer-change cases).
• F-2-R (regional-specialized residence) — for holders of an eligible status recommended by one of Korea's 89 designated shrinking municipalities, since the February 2025 reform. Requires TOPIK level 4 (or Social Integration stage 4–5), either 70%+ of per-capita GNI in income or an associate degree, confirmed employment/business in the region in nearly any industry (a 2025 change lifted most sector restrictions), and residence in that municipality — lets the region's employers hire up to 50% of their Korean headcount in eligible foreign workers, and lets the F-2-R holder's spouse work locally too.

F-3 dependent visa

Covers the spouse and minor children of someone holding D-1 through E-7 status (D-3 technical trainees excluded) — as of July 2024, F-2/F-4/H-2 dependents were folded into the same unified F-3 category. A July 2025 update tightened the income test for the sponsoring visa holder (the same household-size income table used for F-6, but an international-student sponsor's own income is excluded from the household count), with a fallback: if actual income falls short by under 10% of the threshold, a bank deposit worth 5x the shortfall (held 6+ months) can make up the difference. E-1 (professor), E-3 (research), E-4 (tech guidance), E-5 (professional), and D-8 investors above USD 500,000 are exempt from the income test entirely.

Since April 2025, F-3 dependents of E-7-4 skilled-worker sponsors gained a real work right: agriculture, forestry, livestock, domestic help, childcare, and nursing-care jobs, on top of the professional-field work already open to dependents of other E-1–E-7 professional visas.

F-1 family-visit & residence

For visiting or living with family without economic activity — most commonly the parents (up to 2) or one extended family member of a marriage immigrant, with stricter time limits (1 year, extendable up to 4 years 10 months around a birth) that ease for documented humanitarian cases (caring for a seriously ill spouse, a disabled child, or a marriage immigrant raising 3+ children alone). Also covers F-1-6 (household-affairs settlement after a failed marriage, tied to any ongoing property/debt litigation) and the dependents of an F-2-7 point-based visa holder in specific income scenarios.

Why this family of visas is easy to get wrong

Each F-series subtype reads similarly on the surface but has its own income table, language threshold, and document list — and several changed materially in 2025 alone (F-3's income rules, F-2-R's whole framework, the E-7-4→F-3 spousal work-permit expansion). A generic checklist pulled from an old blog post or forum thread is a common cause of an otherwise-qualified applicant being rejected on a since-changed requirement.