Jung Min-ho has worked as a staff writer at The Korea Times since 2012, mostly covering social and political issues. He currently belongs to the Politics & City Desk where he covers topics such as health, labor and human rights. Prior to joining the team, he was responsible for covering North Korea and sports. His article about a biosecurity breach of Middle East respiratory syndrome won him an award from the Korea Science Journalists Association in 2016. He is also the co-author of the book, "Medical Pioneers of Korea" (2019). He served as the head of the international relations committee at the Journalists Association of Korea from 2021 to 2023.
INTERVIEW Korea’s ethnicity-based visa system widens divide among migrants
International students look through brochures at a job fair for foreign residents at Busan's BEXCO, Aug. 19, 2025. Newsis
By Jung Min-ho
Merging ancestry-based visas does little for nonethnic migrants, expert says
The government's recent decision to consolidate two visa categories for ethnic Koreans — merging the F-4 and H-2 visas — was framed by officials as a step toward greater equality. But critics argue that the change leaves intact a more fundamental hierarchy that discriminates based on ethnicity and country of origin.
Eliminating the previous visa distinctions, which treated ethnic Koreans from China and the former Soviet states differently from those arriving from wealthier countries such as the United States, marked an important move against discrimination, said Yu So-jin of the University of Sheffield. Even so, the benefits of this long-term stay-and-work track remain reserved for coethnic migrants (of Korean descent) and are not extended to nonethnic migrants in Korea, underscoring the limits of the reform, she added.
“On a fundamental level, this visa system is discriminatory against all other non-coethnic migrants who are subject to stricter rules. It also reflects that Korea’s immigration policies are more restrictive and less inclusive than many other comparable countries which have more lenient immigration policies,” she said in a recent email interview.
Yu, author of an academic article titled “Migrant racialization in South Korea: class and nationality as the central narrative,” thinks that a more universal, rights-based visa system is ultimately needed. However, she does not expect this to happen in the short term.
One reason, Yu said, lies in the government’s view of ethnic Koreans of foreign nationality as valuable assets for strengthening international relations, corporate investment and cultural diplomacy. At the same time, Korea faces a demographic crisis that heightens the demand for more people — preferably those perceived to share blood ties and cultural heritage with the nation.
“I do concur with the need for a more universal, rights-based system, but dismantling the strong idea of the ethnically homogenous nation which has been constructed and reinforced throughout the modern history of Korea is not an easy task. This is particularly so when more coethnic migrants become permanent residents and settle in Korea — a group I believe will have increasing economic and political influence in domestic matters,” she said.
Nevertheless, Yu said, she doubts that the nation’s strict immigration regime for nonethnic migrants is sustainable. If it does persist, however, she said it will “increasingly trigger public debate on what counts as Korean and whether ethnicity should remain central to that definition.” Yu added that prolonged inequality could also trigger backlash against coethnic communities here, noting that “negative sentiments toward Joseonjok (ethnic Koreans from China) are already visible.”
Yu added that Korea is not alone in linking immigration privileges to ethnic heritage. Japan, Taiwan and Indonesia, for example, also provide special visa pathways for their coethnic populations abroad, while countries such as Israel, Greece and Italy extend similar benefits to diaspora groups. Although the details differ, she said, these programs share a common logic — that a country’s identity is rooted in shared ethnicity and culture, and that coethnic migrants provide a practical solution to issues like labor shortages because of their linguistic and cultural familiarity.
Yu said the retention and promotion of the Overseas Koreans Agency, a state body in charge of handling policies related to ethnic Koreans living abroad, reflects both the nation’s global ambitions and the persistence of its ethnicity‑based nationalism.
“From the nationalist state perspective, such support from overseas Koreans is beneficial and necessary. Unless a universal model of global citizenship truly emerges, the state will continue to use an exclusionary notion of citizenship and national membership that focuses on being ‘Korean,’” she said.
“The state can still offer a voice against discrimination and the racialization of all kinds of migrants and support their inclusion in the citizenry, but the principle remains: Koreans over migrants. In my article, although I argue that racially based hierarchies exist among migrants, all migrants — including both coethnic and non-coethnic groups — are negatively racialized by ‘native-born’ Koreans, who are deemed by the state as the only group with full and unquestionable rights inside the nation.”