Three investment routes reach Korean permanent residence

The Republic of Korea publishes investor routes on visa.go.kr, a site operated by the Ministry of Justice from the government complex at Gwacheon. Three of them end in permanent residence, which Korea calls F-5. Two of the three are grouped under a top-level menu named Immigrant Investor; the third sits elsewhere, in the ordinary list of visa categories. No page among the three links to either of the others.

Read together, they are not three prices for one product. They are three different undertakings.

The scheme that states the capital is returned

Under the Immigrant Investor Scheme for Public Business, an applicant who invests the designated minimum in the scheme’s projects and funds is granted F-2 Resident status immediately after the investment is made. The portal then states that permanent residence follows: “You will be granted Permanent Residency if you maintain your original investments for 5 years.” The investor’s spouse and unmarried children take F-2 as well, with the right to enter and leave freely, work, run a business and study.

The minimums are published: 1.5 billion KRW or more for what the portal calls General Investment Immigration, and 3 billion KRW or more for High-amount Investment Immigration.

The page also describes a Principal Protection feature, in these words: “Notwithstanding no interest until the full recovery, the scheme guarantees the return of the original amount you invested.” That is the portal’s undertaking as published, and it is reported here as such: the protection is of the original amount, and the wording ties the absence of interest to the period before full recovery.

For the mechanics, one detail is fixed rather than optional. Woori Bank is the only financial institution approved by the Ministry of Justice for this scheme, and the portal lists the ten branches that handle it. Two are in Vietnam — Hanoi, at the Daeha Business Center on Kim Ma street, and Ho Chi Minh City, at Kumho Asiana Plaza — alongside Seoul, Moscow and Kuala Lumpur. That is the designated channel for the transfer.

The scheme that states prices can fall

The Tourism and Leisure Facility Investment Immigration System reaches the same two statuses through property. An investor who puts more than the standard amount into real estate — tourism and leisure facilities — inside investment areas designated and announced by the Minister of Justice is granted F-2. Permanent residence, the page says, follows “according to certain standards” if the investment is maintained for five years. The Public Business page, at the equivalent step, does not carry that phrase; what other conditions either scheme applies beyond the wording quoted here is not established.

The risk language differs too. Where the other page describes a guarantee, this one states: “Depending on the price of real estate, profits and/or loss can both occur.”

It is also specific about what ends the investment. Under maintenance conditions the page states that the “Investment is NOT maintained in case of Collateral, Seizure, or Taking out a loan”. A property pledged as security, seized, or borrowed against stops counting for these purposes. Whether comparable restrictions apply to the other scheme is not something this article checked.

A practical note on reading it at all: one direct retrieval of this page’s HTML produced twelve characters. Opened in a browser, the page is complete. The portal draws its navigation and tables with script, which is why a browser was used for it.

What the designated-areas table shows, and what it does not

The same page carries the list of designated investment areas, and reports eleven.

The column headed Minimum Investment Amounts carries no amounts. All eleven rows display the string (million KRW) — the unit, with no figure — although the text above the table says to see the table for the investment amount per area. The page directs readers to a separate announcement for the detail of each area. That announcement was not located for this article, so the entry price for any individual area is not something reported here.

The period column is populated. Read on 17 September 2026, ten of the eleven rows showed an end date that had already passed: two ended on 31 December 2025, six on 30 April 2026, and two on 19 May 2026. The eleventh, Yongpyong in Gangwon, runs to 31 March 2030. The earliest start date in the table is Pyeongchang Alpensia in Gangwon, 14 February 2011, followed by Gyeongdo in Yeosu on 19 August 2011 and the three Incheon areas — Songdo, Cheongna and Yeongjong — on 1 November 2011.

What that establishes is how the Ministry’s own table displayed on one day, and no more. It is not a finding that the route has closed, that any particular area has ceased to qualify, or that Yongpyong is the only area now open. The page describes the system in the present tense and points to a separate document this article has not seen; a table and an unread announcement cannot settle between them what is currently designated. The reason to set it out is narrower: an investor told that a Korean resort purchase leads to residence can check on the Ministry’s own page which area is being referred to, and what that page currently displays against it.

The third route, in a different section

Under General Guide, in the list of visas by category, the Investment group contains the D-8 business visas and one permanent-residence category: Big Investor (F-5-5). Its eligibility text is a single sentence: “A foreign investor who has invested more than $500,000 U.S. dollars at the time of application for permanent residence and has employed more than five native Koreans as a full-time worker.”

That is F-5 with no intermediate residence step described on the page, and it is the only one of the three quoted in United States dollars. Of the three pages quoted here, it is the only one that states an employment condition, and the condition is more than five — the page sets a floor, not a number. It does not say for how long those employees must be retained, at what wage, on what kind of contract, or in what sector, and this article does not fill in answers the page does not give.

There is no single set of three figures to line up. Public Business publishes two thresholds, both in won. Big Investor publishes one, in dollars, and the conversion moves daily; no dated rate is used here. The property route publishes no threshold at all in what was read — the column that should carry it is empty. The sums that are published are attached to different obligations, and the portal does not describe them in terms that would make a single ranking meaningful.

What this article did not read

The underlying statute and its enforcement decrees were not read. Every condition above is what the Ministry’s portal publishes, not what an Act provides. The Korean-language versions of the same pages were not read, so whether they are fuller or more recent than the English is unknown. The separate announcement on designated areas was not located. And the pages read do not give how many people have used any of the three routes.

One limitation belongs with the dates. None of the eligibility or threshold pages carries an update date. The reading date above says when the pages were opened; it does not say when their contents were last revised, and the portal does not show that.

A note on one source: the registry The Legation Times works from records hikorea.go.kr for the real-estate route. Opened on 17 September it returned twenty-three characters — “Welcome to G4F of KOREA” — and nothing else. Nothing in this article rests on it.

What the portal does support is one practical point. These three routes, published by one ministry, lead to the same permanent residence, and their terms differ where it matters: one states that the original amount is returned, with no interest until it is recovered in full; one states that prices can fall as well as rise; and one sets a dollar threshold together with an employment floor. Anyone offered “Korean investment immigration” has a reason to ask which scheme is meant and to read that scheme’s own page, because these undertakings are not interchangeable.