Living in Korea

D-7 vs D-8 Visa Korea: What Separates Them Is a 100 Million Won Investment

Kim Taechoul, ReporterPublished 2026-11-05 KST

✓ Verified 2026-11-05 · against official sourcesOriginal source ↗A daily paper for first-time visitors to Korea · every morning · Korean · English · Japanese · Chinese · Vietnamese · Indonesian

Figure: Korea Tourism Times — no usable photo was available, so this chart illustrates the article's "At a glance" facts · Source KOTRA / Invest Korea · Verified 2026-11-05

Bottom line: This is for employees sent to Korea by their company. If you stay on your home office's payroll and are simply posted to Korea, that's a D-7 (intra-company transfer) visa. If you or your company directly invests in a Korean entity and you come to run or work at it, that's D-8 (corporate investment). Both get called "expats" or "jaejuwon," but the visas run on completely different criteria and paperwork.

If you didn't know: D-8 requires investing at least 100 million won in a Korean company and holding at least 10% of its voting shares to count as "foreign direct investment." Fall short on either number and your D-8 application is rejected — and you lose the time and administrative cost already spent preparing the file. D-7 has no investment threshold, but instead requires a certain length of service at the overseas head office; this review could not confirm that exact length from an official source, so check directly with your HR department or HiKorea before assuming anything.

At a glance

D-8 (corporate investment) — at least 100 million won invested in a Korean company · at least 10% of voting shares · must register as a foreign-invested company within 60 days of completing the investment · report to KOTRA or a foreign exchange bank · D-7 (intra-company transfer) — posted from an overseas head office, public institution, or organization, no investment threshold, required length of prior service not clearly stated in official sources · Both visas are applied for at hikorea.go.kr or your local immigration office

How we checked this

Invest Korea (investkorea.org) and Statistics Korea's index information define "foreign direct investment" under Article 2(1)(4) of the Foreign Investment Promotion Act as an investment of at least 100 million won combined with holding at least 10% of the target company's voting shares. A foreign-invested company must register within 60 days of completing its capital contribution (Article 21(1) of the same Act). Meeting this threshold is what allows an executive or employee to be dispatched or appointed to the Korean entity on a D-8 visa to take part in management. D-7, by contrast, is granted when an employee of an overseas head office, public institution, or organization is sent to its Korean branch or subsidiary — but this review could not pin down the specific minimum length of prior head-office service from HiKorea or an official Ministry of Justice notice, so that detail is left as unconfirmed rather than guessed at. I checked Invest Korea's official guidance page and Statistics Korea's index information (index.go.kr) directly on 2026-11-05.

Picking the wrong visa type, or missing the 60-day investment registration window, can come back to bite you later when you try to extend your stay or change status. Verified 2026-11-05 · Source KOTRA / Invest Korea

Source · how this was written — Written by the Korea Tourism Times editorial desk · Original sourceone source — not cross-checked

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D-7 vs D-8 Visa Korea: What Separates Them Is a 100 Million Won Investment

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