Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

South Korea launches digital nomad visa to boost remote work options in 2024

techsauce.co

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 62 posts

Re: South Korea launches digital nomad visa to boost remote work options in 2024

#31

Post by csomar »

splix wrote: post #5
Fbnkigffb66tfbj wrote: post #2

I haven't seen any "digital nomad visas" that make much sense for a typical nomadic remote worker. Why go through all the bureaucracy when I can just quietly work while on 30-90 day visa-free (or cheap and easy visa-on-arrival) tourist entry stamps?

Going for a 30-90 days to a country usually means you rent a short term overpriced Airbnb. With longer visa you can get a normal one-year lease, for most likely the same price.

Still cheaper than going through gov. bureaucracy and having a higher tax exposure. In many other places, you can still rent long-termish and still visa-run regularly.

Re: South Korea launches digital nomad visa to boost remote work options in 2024

#32

Post by csomar »

alexawarrior23 wrote: post #7
kasey_junk wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because that’s typically illegal?

As long as your source of income is entirely outside the country, which it typically is, then in most cases you're fine. You're essentially just like a travelling investor. It's earning income from within the country that you can't do legally without a visa.

This is not correct if you are doing actual work in the country. What's happening is, many of these countries are low income ones; and this kind of work is far removed from their economies. So they are turning a blind eye to it.

Re: South Korea launches digital nomad visa to boost remote work options in 2024

#33

Post by alexawarrior23 »

maeil wrote: post #25
alexawarrior23 wrote: post #4

So I've got to prove I make $70k a year, and then put down a $7500 deposit on a small apartment that costs me $1800 a month in a crappy part of Seoul, and get insurance and a bunch of other things, and then I only get to stay six months, and if I extend it it's only up to two years? No thanks. When will the demographic time bomb racial supremacist countries learn that people want to ACTUALLY IMMIGRATE to countries? B…

> So I've got to prove I make $70k a year, and then put down a $7500 deposit on a small apartment that costs me $1800 a month Nice, And that's places that are suitable for 2 people to live in - the large majority of digital nomads live on their own, in which case it's even cheaper.

You must be aware of a different Seoul then I am. I've looked at moving there and asked my Korean friends. "Fully furnished, two-bed room apartments in central, well-connected areas of Seoul are <$1000 per month" does not jibe with anything I have seen, ever. Please send me the property link because I'm obviously looking in the wrong place.

Re: South Korea launches digital nomad visa to boost remote work options in 2024

#34

Post by csomar »

petesergeant wrote: post #20

As with almost every digital nomad visa I’ve seen, this seems poorly thought out, tax implications aren’t clear, but is someone’s “let’s be modern!” pet project. UAE’s Remote Work visa is the only one I’ve been tempted to use so far.

Much easier for the UAE to do this as they have no income taxes; and also they are used to having a large foreign population on their soil (and normalized with that situation). Most other countries are not ready for that.

Re: South Korea launches digital nomad visa to boost remote work options in 2024

#35

Post by stormfather »

alexawarrior23 wrote: post #28
worthless-trash wrote: post #15

My memory may be failing, last time (15 years ish? ) I looked at living / staying in Korea most places asked for a full years rent up front, then additional rent each month. You are supposed to get it back at the end of the lease. It would be trivial for a land lord to abuse a foreigner in this circumstance on the VISA, its not like you can stay around after the end of your lease to take them to court to recoup your…

Exactly, I suffered this landlord abuse while working abroad. Apartment was delivered back to the landlord crystal clean and 100% intact. Then they took my entire deposit and billed me around 12,000 EUR. I even had pictures to show that I had done no damage, but you can imagine how foreigner vs native testimony works in these kinds of super-racist countries. I managed to leave before I had to pay the bill, but I stil…

Where was this? Asking so I can never visit.

Re: South Korea launches digital nomad visa to boost remote work options in 2024

#36

Post by throwaway290 »

petesergeant wrote: post #26
throwaway290 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In most countries if you stay long enough and qualify then you become a permanent resident. The sneaky trick that SK is doing with its maximum term of 2 years is ensuring that no one on this arrangement will be eligible (which apparently requires residing there for 5 years at least: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_to_South_Korea ). This makes the program entirely pointless for intended audience, ie. people…

Or, more likely, people will switch to a different visa type if they’re looking to do more years? I’m not sure any of this counts as a “sneaky trick”

Of course and that's exactly the point. Other visa types require things like employment in SK or being Korean, things nomad visa is supposed to avoid

Re: South Korea launches digital nomad visa to boost remote work options in 2024

#37

Post by csomar »

maeil wrote: post #25
alexawarrior23 wrote: post #4

So I've got to prove I make $70k a year, and then put down a $7500 deposit on a small apartment that costs me $1800 a month in a crappy part of Seoul, and get insurance and a bunch of other things, and then I only get to stay six months, and if I extend it it's only up to two years? No thanks. When will the demographic time bomb racial supremacist countries learn that people want to ACTUALLY IMMIGRATE to countries? B…

> So I've got to prove I make $70k a year, and then put down a $7500 deposit on a small apartment that costs me $1800 a month Nice, And that's places that are suitable for 2 people to live in - the large majority of digital nomads live on their own, in which case it's even cheaper.

As someone who tried to find a suitable sub-$1000 rent in Seoul, I call your claim. Maybe you can provide online listings to counter?

Re: South Korea launches digital nomad visa to boost remote work options in 2024

#38

Post by renewiltord »

maeil wrote: post #30
renewiltord wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, his point is that he isn't going to do it with those restrictions. Most of these startup visas have all these restrictions. And everyone is always like "yeah, you need to play by the rules like everyone else" and shit like that, but in the end it's just people saying "I'm not buying what you're offering" and then the government just sits there not having achieved whatever objective it set out to do with this st…

> It's an asymmetric relationship. The nomad doesn't care if SK runs this program. But SK does care if people don't come. Unfortunately, they don't particularly care. The whole driver behind this program is optics. Both to domestic voters "Look at how global and modern the current government is and how much we're doing", as well as to international headline-readers "Look at how progressive Korea is".

Ah, I see. In that case, I suppose no one really cares where it goes. S Korea's loss, in my opinion. They're the ones whose population will shrink by half every half-century from now.

Re: South Korea launches digital nomad visa to boost remote work options in 2024

#39

Post by klipt »

splix wrote: post #5
Fbnkigffb66tfbj wrote: post #2

I haven't seen any "digital nomad visas" that make much sense for a typical nomadic remote worker. Why go through all the bureaucracy when I can just quietly work while on 30-90 day visa-free (or cheap and easy visa-on-arrival) tourist entry stamps?

Going for a 30-90 days to a country usually means you rent a short term overpriced Airbnb. With longer visa you can get a normal one-year lease, for most likely the same price.

Staying a year often makes your tax resident which is exactly the kind of headache nomads moving around are trying to avoid.

For example if you own any stocks and become tax resident, then leave and break tax residency, you may often owe an "exit tax" on your unrealized stock gains.

Even stocks in your retirement accounts like IRA may not be treated as tax advantaged by another country.

Re: South Korea launches digital nomad visa to boost remote work options in 2024

#40

Post by Jcampuzano2 »

tavavex wrote: post #6
Fbnkigffb66tfbj wrote: post #2

I haven't seen any "digital nomad visas" that make much sense for a typical nomadic remote worker. Why go through all the bureaucracy when I can just quietly work while on 30-90 day visa-free (or cheap and easy visa-on-arrival) tourist entry stamps?

I don't know how the whole digital nomad model works, but I'm guessing that it's kind of a hassle to have to spend money every 30-90 days to cross out of the country and back in. Plus, some countries have policies to counteract this "infinite visa glitch" and can punish people for doing this.

Most digital nomads I know (including myself) do not go back to the same country at the end of their 30-90 days though. They hop to another country or do a stop at home for a while to do anything they may need to at home before heading somewhere else.

I regularly stay somewhere for 90ish days, then go home for a while to do anything I need to back home days and then somewhere else.

This is also why a digital nomad visa for a year or more doesn't make much sense. I know very few true digital nomads who even have a desire to stay the same place for more than a few months. At that point you're not a digital nomad anymore.

Post reply on HN