South Korea has introduced the ‘Workation’ visa, a form of digital nomad visa to encourage remote workers to move to the Asian country.
Nigerians may apply as the requirements are not as stringent as relocating to North America or Europe.
According to a report in the Korea Herald, South Korea’s Justice Ministry says the digital nomad visa will make remote work and vacations smoother for visitors.
“The new system will allow employees and employers in overseas firms to tour and work remotely in Korea for a longer period of time,” reads a line from the report.
To qualify for the visa, applicants must confirm they make at least 85 million won ($65,000) per year from a non-Korean company, show proof of health insurance and have a clean criminal record.
The visa is said to be aimed at increasing the workforce of the country said to have a low birth rate.
Professor Jungho Suh, project director of the Korean Management Institute at George Washington University, believes that the workation visa is a “soft launch” for a bigger plan to bring more foreigners into Korea – and not only for career reasons.
South Korea has the world’s lowest birth rate as the number of average births from a woman’s lifetime is expected to drop from 0.78 in 2022 to 0.65 in 2025 according to Statistics Korea. The country is also said to have recorded more deaths than births in the last three years.
Another reason for the nomad visa could be South Korea’s homogenous population, with 7 out of 10 confirming after the National Human Rights Commission announced in 2020 that racial discrimination exists in the country.
“Maybe by enforcing this new visa policy,” CNN quoted Suh to have said.
“The government is trying to lead the agenda or to lead the discussion to normalize social mix between ethnicities or between Koreans and non-Koreans.”
A website that keeps track of trends for remote workers states that an individual may need about $2,050 per month to live in Seoul. Also, it says applicants may struggle with the language as it ranked South Korea 49th out of 113 countries on the English Proficiency Index, which puts it in the “moderate” category. For comparison around the region: Singapore is second in the world, Hong Kong is 29th and Japan is in 87th place.
