Jane Han is the North America editor for The Korea Times. Based in Seattle, she has covered business, culture and social issues across the United States for over 15 years. She previously worked at The Boston Globe.
‘Authentication nation’ tests visitors to Korea ahead of summer travel
Two women stroll through the tourist district of Myeong-dong in central Seoul, Sept. 23, 2022. Korea Times file
By Jane Han
SEATTLE — As the summer vacation season approaches, many travelers heading to Korea are doing the usual pretrip scramble: setting up medical appointments, registering children for summer programs and booking beauty appointments.
And then, almost immediately, they hit the same wall: phone verification.
Before even boarding her flight, a Seattle-based Korean mom of two tried to book a dermatology appointment and sign her kids up for a local summer camp. Each time, the process stopped cold. Enter a Korean phone number. Verify. Confirm. Without it, nothing moves.
“The most annoying word when dealing with anything online in Korea is ‘authentication,’” said Minjung Park, who visits Korea once every two years. “Why are there so many steps of verification and authentication? Drives me crazy.”
The experience points to a broader limitation in Korea’s digital system. Much of it is built around mobile-based identity checks tied to local carriers, making logins fast and secure for residents. For visitors and overseas Koreans without a domestic number, access can be far less straightforward.
Yanolja Research, which analyzed English-language travel posts on Reddit from 2023 to 2025, found that mentions of inconvenience were higher for Korea than Japan, 11 percent compared with 7 percent. The biggest pain points were digital: signing up, verifying identity and making payments. Authentication alone accounted for 13.1 percent of complaints.
The gap shows up in everyday moments. Visitors can move easily through one of the world’s most connected countries, from high-speed trains to near-universal connectivity. But trying to complete a booking, create an account or access certain services often stops at a single step: verification.
The issue extends to leisure as well. Visitors often run into similar hurdles when trying to buy tickets for major attractions such as Lotte World, where online purchases and discounts are frequently tied to mobile verification. Without a local number, some users say they are unable to access promotions or complete bookings through official apps.
“I tried to book discounted tickets online, but it kept asking for phone verification,” a visitor from California said on condition of anonymity. “In the end, I had to pay more at the entrance because I couldn’t use the app.”
Faced with these barriers, many overseas Koreans resort to workarounds, borrowing relatives’ phone numbers, asking friends to complete transactions or simply giving up. For them, the issue can be particularly frustrating. They speak the language and understand the systems, yet still face barriers to access.
The system is rooted in real-name policies, fraud prevention and age verification. Those safeguards are effective domestically, but less adaptable when users fall outside the resident framework, including foreign residents or international tourists. As more services move online, the reliance on phone-based verification has become more deeply embedded across sectors, from reservations and payments to health care and education-related services.
Some efforts are underway, though still limited. The government has begun exploring alternatives that would allow overseas Koreans to verify their identity online without a domestic phone number, while tourism officials have pushed for smoother access to services. Much of the broader system, however, still relies on phone-based authentication by default.
With peak travel weeks approaching, that gap is becoming more visible. Korea has promoted itself as a seamless, high-tech destination, and in many ways, it is. For many visitors, however, the experience still begins with a basic requirement that can be hard to meet: a local phone number.