South Korea's F-1-D "workation" visa became a permanent scheme on 30 June, closing a pilot that had run since January 20241. Maximum stay rises from two years to three. Applicants aged 18 to 34 who settle outside Seoul, Incheon and Gyeonggi Province now qualify at roughly $36,963, the country's per-capita gross national income (GNI), against the pilot's flat two-times-GNI rule.
Jung Sung-ho, the justice minister, framed the scheme around foreigners voluntarily putting down roots2. That purpose sets it apart from every other nomad visa this briefing tracks. Indonesia's E33G, Bulgaria's permit and Colombia's Type V all price access by income alone. Korea instead steers young arrivals into its depopulating provinces, using the visa as demographic policy rather than a revenue or talent play.
Korea has opened a third axis in the topic's politics. Pressure has run on two: left housing movements that read nomads as displacement, and right nativist blocs that read foreigners as threat. A state recruiting foreigners to refill emptying regions answers neither. It treats mobile workers as a fix for a domestic birth-rate problem, which is new ground for the category.
