South Korea's foreign population has climbed past 2.8 million, a record high, according to justice ministry data. But many who arrive find the country's administrative machinery harder to navigate, starting with the website meant to welcome them.


HiKorea, the government's official immigration portal, is the first point of contact with the Korean state for many foreigners. To some of the people it is built to serve, it is also one of the first obstacles: a site, several said, that is simply too confusing to navigate.


Maryam Omer, a 25-year-old Pakistani American, first came to South Korea in 2022 on an exchange program at Yonsei University, and earned a Global MBA from the same university in February. She studied on a D-2 student visa and later moved to a D-10, which allowed her to look for work.


After applying for the D-10 from the United States, Omer was told to obtain an Alien Registration Card (ARC), the identification that any foreign national staying more than 90 days must carry. (The card was officially renamed the Residence Card in 2021, when the Ministry of Justice dropped the word "alien" over its unwelcoming connotations, though most people still call it an ARC.) In South Korea, the card is the key to ordinary life: without it, a foreigner generally cannot open a bank account, get a phone number or sign a lease, or even order food delivery. "It is required for you to function like a person here," Omer said.


To get one, she needed an appointment at an immigration office, booked through HiKorea, where she would submit her application and later collect the card. What she did not realize was that the system assigns each applicant to a specific office based on their registered address. Hers, at the time, was a short-term Airbnb she was renting.


When she looked for help with her paperwork, she said, she found none. "Calling and visiting in person didn't help," Omer said. "The staff couldn't tell me which legal documents were required for my specific case, or even generally, and no one checked whether I actually had everything before processing. So I was left guessing whether my application would even be accepted, with no clear confirmation from the website or the staff."


After waiting more than a month, she returned in person to collect her card. By then, she had moved to a different Airbnb; she was told that the office had stopped processing her application, because her new address fell under a different jurisdiction. She would have to start over. No one, she said, had warned her that moving would reset the process.


"Why couldn't they tell me about this before this happened, and why couldn't they just send my applications to the right immigration center themselves?" Omer said.


The restart pushed her past the 90-day mark, by which foreigners are required to register, a lapse that can carry administrative fines. In the end, Omer said, the help that resolved her case came not from HiKorea or the immigration office but from ChatGPT and from other foreigners on Reddit who had been through the same thing. Following advice she found there, she secured a full year on her D-10 visa — while most of her friends, she said, received only six-month extensions.


The phone line for HiKorea was better only marginally, Omer said. Calls were met with a recording that cited high call volume and then ended; reaching a person required navigating repeated keypad menus, and some automated prompts were hard to follow. "The accent used by the person recorded was way too thick for me to actually comprehend what was being said," she added.


"HiKorea is very Korean style," Omer said, less a complaint about Korean culture, she explained, than a description of a system built around the people who use it most. Other foreigners describe something similar.


"Even with recent improvements, the website still remains difficult to navigate," said Jenny Simenstad, a Norwegian who has lived in South Korea for five years. “I assumed that extending my D-4 visa through the e-application would be convenient, but I could barely get the information I needed because of the way the website is written and structured,” she said, referring to the same problems of AI translations and unorganized information faced by Omer. "It is so frustrating that there is no overview of any necessary documents for any visas on the website, not even a checklist for any visas," Simenstad added. "Regardless of visa types, the website makes it clear that you have to find your way on your own," she said. 


HiKorea was unreachable by phone. The portal's only listed complaint channel, meanwhile, appears to be a fax number at the bottom of the page.


"I like South Korea," Omer said. "I just want the process of legally being here to be a bit more common-sensical,” she added.