Foreign residents' first hurdle is housing. Enkostay says it can clear it.

By Alice Hong

• Published Nov 6, 2026 5:50 AM KST

For many foreign residents, the first few weeks in Seoul can feel almost effortless. The subway works. Convenience stores are everywhere, and there is always another café, restaurant or corner of the city to discover.

Then the paperwork begins.

An appointment for a residence card. A landlord asking for a deposit that can run into the tens of millions of won. Almost overnight, the experience shifts from exploring Korea to deciphering it.

For years, newcomers have leaned on Facebook groups for answers, and learned to sift through thousands of unverified listings and contradictory advice. Now they’re asking a blunter question, often on Reddit: Is this website legit?

That was the question Huy Kim Nguyen, better known online as Kim Ninja, kept seeing about Enkostay, a rental platform for foreign residents.

Nguyen came to Korea five years ago and began documenting the realities of living in Korea while working as a software developer. His YouTube videos explaining how Enkostay works went viral, drawing more than a million views.

"You can't always trust the internet with a pretty website these days," Nguyen said. What people need, he said, are honest reviews from those who actually stayed, and proof that a real company stands behind the site.

"Housing is the first wall every foreigner hits here, and it is the one nobody helps them with," said Oh Jung-hoon, the CEO of Enkowithus, the company behind Enkostay.

A standard Korean lease, Oh said, asks for a one-year commitment, a large deposit, sometimes a Korean guarantor, and a contract written in Korean. "It is a supplier's market, and foreigners sit at the bottom of it," he said.

Nguyen sees the deposit as the biggest obstacle. "In Korea, it starts at maybe $7,000," he said. "That's quite a big amount of money for somebody who comes to a new country."

For a student or recent graduate, he said, handing that much to someone you may not be able to chase down is too great a leap of faith.

Oh knows that feeling. In his 20s, he booked a four-week homestay in London through an agency and paid about 1,000 pounds ($1,323). He later learned that the landlady only received around 600 pounds. The agency had taken the remaining 40 percent.

Oh also recalled how a landlord of a sharehouse he stayed in found reason after reason not to return his deposit. He lived in London at the time, so he kept asking for his money back. "Someone flying home the next week would simply have lost that money," he said.

Years later, while helping a Canadian whose daughter was coming to Korea as an exchange student, Oh encountered the same problem from another direction. The daughter was struggling to find housing. He went to her campus and asked other international students how they found places to live.

"Every single one said the same thing: it was the hardest part of coming here," Oh said. “I wanted to build the opposite of that: a place where you can see the real price, book from abroad and sign in your own language without a deposit.”

How Enkostay works

Enkostay focuses on furnished rentals of one to 12 months, filling the gap between an Airbnb stay and a traditional one-year lease. Tenants can search, sign an electronic contract in English and pay by credit card, including cards issued abroad, before they ever board a plane.

There is no guarantor or security deposit. Instead, Enkostay collects two months of rent upfront. Once they arrive, tenants can directly download host-verified proof-of-residence documents for their residence card applications.

The average contract is about 2.76 million won, according to Oh, or roughly 920,000 won a month for a typical three-month stay. The platform has more than 11,000 listings from over 10,000 hosts and has served more than 20,000 foreign residents.

Listings go through verification before going live, though Oh called user reviews "the strongest guarantee." If a guest arrives at a place that doesn't match the listing, or has a serious problem like mold, Enkostay cancels the contract, refunds the guest and penalizes the host.

"We are not in the accommodation business," Oh said. "We are in the business of people actually living here."

Oh said Enkostay now works with about 10 influencers, usually through either a production fee for a shoot or a free stay for a set period. He estimates that creator content has driven more than 1,700 signed contracts this year, worth over 5 billion won.

For Erica Scorohod, a Moldovan content creator living in Seoul, her experience with Enkostay began before she became a partner with the company. She first used Enkostay as a regular tenant after moving to Korea on an E-6 visa. She rented an apartment for 500,000 won per month to film her early social media content.

"I got really lucky with that accommodation," Scorohod said. The listing matched the apartment, and she ran into no unexpected fees.

A later stay went less smoothly because of a conflict with the host. Rather than stepping back, the platform intervened directly.

"Enkostay took my side and refunded my fees," Scorohod said. "There are some hosts I might not recommend, but I appreciate how Enkostay is on the tenant's side. I always recommend the platform to everyone."

Nguyen also has a partnership with Enkostay, though he has not stayed through the platform himself. Their arrangement developed naturally out of his existing work documenting life in Korea. The two do not actively run campaigns together, he said.

Enkostay is expanding to Busan and other parts of Korea, and plans to launch in Japan in 2027.

Oh was candid about the pressure ahead.

"Right now we are ahead partly because we got here early, but timing is not a moat," Oh said. "Building a clear, undeniable difference in foreign housing is next year's milestone."

For Nguyen, the stakes are simpler. "The first thing you need in a new country is housing," he said. Once that is settled, he added, "you have more energy to solve the other things that you need to tackle, like visa and whatnot."

Alice Hong is a freelance writer and comedian based in Seoul. Follow @hippohong on Instagram.