The E-9 Visa: What It Permits, How Long You Can Stay, and When You May Change Employer

What E-9 actually is

Your contract is signed, the visa says E-9, and nobody has told you what it does and does not let you do. Start with the definition, because everything else follows from it.

Non-professional employment (비전문취업) E-9 is item 21 of attached Table 1-2 to the Enforcement Decree of the Immigration Act (출입국관리법 시행령 [별표 1의2]): a person who meets the domestic employment requirements under the Act on the Employment of Foreign Workers (외국인근로자의 고용 등에 관한 법률), excluding anyone going into a professional occupation that requires particular qualifications or experience. E-9 is defined by exclusion.

Three consequences follow, and they are the three things people get wrong:

Your employment activity is permitted for 3 years from the date of entry, extendable once, by less than two years.

You may not change workplace at will. You need permission from immigration, the grounds are listed in statute, and a worker cannot simply resign in order to move.

Your spouse and children cannot join you on a dependent visa. Dependent (F-3) status (동반(F-3)) covers holders of D-1, D-2, D-4 through E-7, F-2 (excluding subparagraph (ta)), F-4 and H-2. The enumerated range ends at E-7, so E-8, E-9 and E-10 are outside it.

Where an E-9 worker may legally be employed in 2026

The industries open to E-9 are set every year by the Foreign Workforce Policy Committee (외국인력정책위원회) and published as a MOEL public notice. For 2026 that is MOEL Public Notice No. 2025-489 (고용노동부 공고 제2025-489호).

Manufacturing is open to businesses with fewer than 300 regular employees or capital of no more than ₩8 billion, with exceptions for SMEs, mid-sized root-industry enterprises outside the capital region and U-turn firms outside the capital region. Construction is open except at power-plant, steel-mill and petrochemical sites licensed for industrial and environmental facility construction business (산업환경설비). The agriculture-and-livestock category covers KSIC 011, 012 and 014, with 0111 growing of cereal crops and other food crops newly added for 2026. Fisheries covers 03112, 0321 and 07220. Forestry covers 02011, 02012, 02020 and 02040, corporate employers only. Mining covers 06 and 07, and only where annual output is 150,000 tonnes or more.

Services are different in kind: not a general opening but a closed positive list.

Hotels, condominiums and hostels — 55101, 55103, 55109 — are open only in Seoul, Busan, North Gyeongsang, Gangwon and Jeju, and only for the job codes 45311 food-service workers, 94110 building cleaners and 95220 kitchen assistants. Korean and foreign restaurants (5611, 5612) are open only to businesses that have been trading for 5 years or more. General building-cleaning businesses under 74211 are included where they hold a cleaning subcontract with a listed hotel or condominium, for building cleaners under 94110 only, and where the total subcontract term is at least 2 years with at least 6 months remaining.

Outside that list, restaurants, hotels and offices are not open to E-9.

Three years, one extension, and two clocks

Article 18 of the Act on the Employment of Foreign Workers (외국인근로자의 고용 등에 관한 법률) permits employment activity within 3 years from the date of entry. That is the employment-activity period (취업활동 기간), and it is a different thing from the immigration period of stay (체류기간).

Article 18-2(1) allows the period to be extended only once, by less than 2 years, and only where the employer requests re-employment permission before the three years expire. In administration that extension is set at 1 year 10 months, which is where the familiar 4 years 10 months comes from. Article 18-2(2) allows a further extension of up to 1 year, and only by a decision of the Foreign Workforce Policy Committee (외국인력정책위원회) in an epidemic or a natural disaster.

The second clock is immigration's. The ceiling on a single grant of stay is 3 years for E-9, the same as E-7 and H-2, while seasonal work E-8 is 8 months. Stay has to be extended separately from the employment-activity period.

The extension is the employer's application, not yours. If your three years are running out and nothing has been filed, that is the conversation to have this week.

Leaving and coming back: 1 month or 6 months

Article 18-3 of the Act on the Employment of Foreign Workers sets the default. A worker who has worked in Korea and departed cannot be re-employed under the Act until 6 months have passed from the date of departure.

Article 18-4(1) — the committed-worker re-entry special provision (성실근로자 재입국 취업 특례) — cuts that to 1 month. The wait was cut from 3 months to 1 month with effect from 14 October 2021. Three conditions must all be met. First, either no workplace change at all during the employment-activity period, or a change under Article 25(1)1 or 3 with a remaining contract of at least 1 year meeting the MOEL Notice criteria, or a change under Article 25(1)2 (employer fault) with a contract of at least 1 year — or, with under a year, approval after the Foreign Worker Rights Protection Council (외국인근로자 권익보호협의회) is consulted. Second, employment at a business the Foreign Workforce Policy Committee (외국인력정책위원회) designates as unable to hire Korean workers. Third, a labour contract of at least 1 year effective from the day work restarts after re-entry.

The service criterion for workplace-changers is MOEL Notice No. 2025-18, Criteria for Recognising the Special Provision on Re-entry Employment Restrictions for Workers Who Changed Their Business or Workplace (고용노동부고시 제2025-18호 「사업 또는 사업장 변경자에 대한 재입국 취업 제한의 특례 인정기준」), in force since 7 March 2025: 4 years 10 months of service in the industry first worked, across seven industries — manufacturing, services, agriculture and livestock, fishing, construction, forestry and mining. Construction was added in April 2023, and mining and forestry in December 2024. It applies to workers already in Korea.

One deadline decides whether this route exists for you, and you cannot meet it yourself. Article 14-3 of the Enforcement Rule of the Act on the Employment of Foreign Workers requires the employer to file the re-employment-expiry re-entry employment permit application (재고용 만료자 재입국 고용허가 신청서) no later than 7 days before the extended employment-activity period expires; the office issues the permit within 7 days of receipt. The worker cannot file it.

Re-entry under Article 18-4 is allowed only once. On re-entry, Articles 18, 18-2 and 25 all apply again, so the returning worker gets a fresh 3 years plus one under-two-year extension and a fresh set of workplace-change allowances — a ceiling of 9 years 8 months across two cycles. Article 18-4(2) disapplies Article 6 (efforts to recruit Korean workers), Article 7(2) (Korean-language proficiency test) and Article 11 (post-entry employment training for foreign workers, which may be shortened under the proviso to Article 11(1) of the Enforcement Rule).

The other route back is the Special EPS-TOPIK re-entry program (특별한국어시험 재입국제도), which needs the Special EPS-TOPIK (특별한국어능력시험) and a 6-month wait. The EPS-TOPIK guide covers that exam.

Changing workplace: the rule that decides everything

This is the single most consequential rule an E-9 worker lives under, and the one most often described wrongly.

You need immigration's permission, not a notification. Article 26-2 of the Enforcement Decree of the Immigration Act (출입국관리법 시행령) limits the 15-day after-the-fact notification route to statuses E-1 through E-7. E-9 is not in that range. H-2 holders are exempt from the Workplace Change Permit (근무처 변경허가) altogether under Article 12(7) of the Act on the Employment of Foreign Workers (외국인근로자의 고용 등에 관한 법률); E-9 holders are not.

The grounds are in Article 25(1), and they do not include changing your mind. They are: the employer, with justifiable cause, terminating the contract during its term or refusing to renew it at expiry; business suspension or closure, cancellation of the Employment Permit (고용허가서) under Article 19(1), an employment restriction under Article 20(1), a dormitory provided in breach of Article 22-2, a breach of working conditions, or unfair treatment — reasons not attributable to the worker, as published by MOEL Notice; and grounds set by the Enforcement Decree, which Article 30(1) gives as injury that makes the current work unsuitable while other work remains possible.

Wage arrears have their own thresholds, in Article 4(1)1 of MOEL Notice No. 2021-30 (고용노동부 고시 제2021-30호), in force since 1 April 2021. The employer's simple calculation error (단순 계산착오) is excluded. Apply while the arrears continue, or within 4 months of them ending.

Article 5 of the Notice covers the rest: sexual violence by the employer, by colleagues, or by the employer's spouse (including a de facto spouse) or lineal relatives; sexual harassment, assault or habitual verbal abuse; discrimination by nationality, religion, sex or disability; accommodation provided in a vinyl greenhouse (비닐하우스) or an illegal temporary building (가설 건축물); the employer refusing to accept your labour for 5 days or more without paying wages or shutdown allowance (휴업수당); and 3 months or more of insurance non-enrolment or arrears left uncorrected after a corrective request (시정 요구). Article 4(4) covers a serious industrial accident (중대재해), and injury requiring 3 months or more of treatment caused by a breach of the Occupational Safety and Health Act (산업안전보건법) — the four-month clock runs from the date of the serious industrial accident in the first case, and from the day you return to the workplace in the second.

There is one more ground worth knowing, because it costs you nothing. Under Article 19 of the Act on the Employment of Foreign Workers, the Employment Center (고용센터) may cancel the Employment Permit where it was obtained fraudulently, where the employer breaches the wage or working conditions agreed before entry, or where wage arrears or other labour-law breaches make the contract untenable; the employer must then end the contract within 15 days. That cancellation is itself an employer-fault ground under Article 25(1)2, so the move does not use up one of your changes.

The deadlines, the count, and the 3-month window that is not a grace period

Article 25(3) of the Act on the Employment of Foreign Workers gives two deadlines and they run at the same time. The application must be filed within 1 month of the labour contract ending, and the Workplace Change Permit (근무처 변경허가) must be obtained within 3 months of filing. Miss either and the statute says you must leave the country. Where industrial accident, illness, pregnancy or childbirth prevented it, each clock runs from the day that cause ends. Article 30(3) of the Enforcement Decree makes referral to immigration mandatory rather than discretionary: the Employment Center must give notice.

Article 16 of the Enforcement Rule of the Act on the Employment of Foreign Workers gives the Employment Center (고용센터) 15 days to process a change application, extendable once by up to a further 15 days. A separate application to extend the workplace-change application period (사업장 변경 신청기간 연장신청서) exists for workers blocked by injury, illness, pregnancy or childbirth.

Now the part that ends stays. Those three months are a job-search window, not a grace period in which you may earn money. HRD Korea's own leaflet warns that taking daily-paid or part-time work during the change period is punishable under Article 21 of the Immigration Act (출입국관리법): up to 1 year's imprisonment or a fine of up to ₩10,000,000. The employer who uses such a worker faces the same penalty plus an employment-restriction disposition (고용제한 처분) under Article 20 of the Act on the Employment of Foreign Workers.

Article 25(4) limits the number of changes: no more than 3 during the initial three-year period, worded “in principle,” and no more than 2 during the 1-year-10-month extension. Changes made for an employer-fault reason under Article 25(1)2 are not counted. That provision was last amended on 28 January 2014, and Employment24 (고용24) confirmed it unchanged on 23 January 2026.

On top of the count sits a restriction most people have never heard of. Since September 2023, for workers entering from then on, changes are confined within a defined region and industry. It was announced on 5 July 2023. For particularly short-staffed sub-sectors such as shipbuilding, changes are confined to the industry. MOEL does not publish the composition of the regions, so ask your Employment Center which region your permit sits in before you start looking.

And one thing that has not happened: as of 29 August 2026, MOEL's own release of 4 June 2026 still describes workplace-change reform as being pursued, with no effective date. Article 25(3) has never been amended. Article 25(1) was last amended on 15 January 2019, and the Notice on 1 April 2021. Nothing has been enacted. A great deal of secondary content written after April 2026 implies otherwise.

Our opinion, and the statute is the whole argument: on E-9 you cannot resign your way into a better job. If the reason you want to leave is on the list in Article 25(1), document it and go to the Employment Center. If it is not, the clock that starts when you walk out is the one that ends your stay.

What E-9 does not include

No dependent visa. Dependent (F-3) status (동반(F-3)) is available only to the spouse and unmarried minor children of holders of D-1, D-2, D-4 through E-7, F-2 (excluding subparagraph (ta)), F-4 and H-2. The list runs D-1, D-2, D-4, D-5, D-6, D-7, D-8, D-9, E-1, E-2, E-3, E-4, E-5, E-6, E-7 and stops. E-8, E-9 and E-10 are excluded. H-2 is inside the range, which is a real difference between the two statuses.

No switching into E-9 from inside Korea. Changing into E-9 from another status while already in the country is in principle not permitted — E-9 is issued before entry, through EPS, in the home country. The narrow exception is recovering E-9 status after temporary G-1 status for industrial-accident treatment, within the remaining permitted stay.

And no H-2 as an alternative. Working visit (H-2) status (방문취업(H-2)) is restricted to foreign nationals of Korean descent (외국국적동포) aged 18 or over. A Vietnamese, Filipino, Thai or Indonesian worker who is not of Korean descent can never hold it. New H-2 issuance stops from 2026 in any case, because the overseas-Korean visas are being merged: MOEL Public Notice No. 2025-489 (고용노동부 공고 제2025-489호) states that new H-2 issuance will stop from 2026 with the integration of the F-4 and H-2 overseas-Korean visas, and that the stay ceiling for H-2 holders will be abolished. The Ministry of Justice implemented the F-4 integration on 12 February 2026, covering roughly 860,000 ethnic Koreans; in the first three months, from 12 February to 12 May 2026, 47,632 applied and 36,561 were approved.

The way out of E-9: skilled worker E-7-4

Specific activities (E-7) status (특정활동(E-7)) is item 20 of the same table: a person engaging in an activity specifically designated by the Minister of Justice under a contract with a Korean public institution or private organisation. Skilled worker (숙련기능인력) E-7-4 is the sub-category E-9 holders upgrade into — and it brings the worker inside the F-3 dependent-visa range.

The requirements: at least 4 years of stay on E-9, E-10 or H-2 within the last 10 years and currently working normally at your current employer; a recommendation from an employer you worked at for at least 1 year; an E-7-4 contract of at least 2 years; 200 points or more out of 300 including bonus points; and a minimum of 50 points on each of average income and Korean-language ability. Workers who have stayed at least 3 years in a non-capital region can qualify on a recommendation from the head of a metropolitan government instead of the four years. Applications go through HiKorea. Workers are excluded for at least 3 months of unlawful stay, four or more violations of the Immigration Act (출입국관리법), or a fine of ₩1,000,000 or more.

The income figures are the most misstated numbers in this area, and the confusion is that there are two of them and a sector carve-out. The ₩24,000,000 figure that circulates as a universal minimum is not universal: it applies to agriculture and livestock, fisheries and coastal merchant shipping workers only.

Ministry of Justice Public Notice No. 2025-406 (법무부 공고 제2025-406호), issued on 29 December 2025, sets E-7-4 at ₩26,000,000 a year or more, applied to issuance of E-7 Confirmations of Visa Issuance (사증발급인정서) from 1 February 2026 to 31 December 2026. For comparison it sets E-7-1 at ₩31,120,000 and E-7-2 and E-7-3 at ₩25,890,000, and it permits occupation-specific thresholds.

One temporary door closes at the end of this year. An applicant scoring 150 points or more in total may defer the Korean-language requirement to the first two-year extension — but only until 31 December 2026.

From June 2026, in agriculture, livestock and fisheries, the employment ceiling for skilled foreign workers rises from 30% to 50%; micro-businesses with 4 or fewer Korean employees may hire up to 2 E-7-4 workers; and prior service counts toward renewal or conversion for workers who moved for unavoidable reasons such as business suspension or closure or unfair treatment.

What the penalties are, if it goes wrong

Article 94 of the Immigration Act (출입국관리법) carries up to 3 years' imprisonment or a fine of up to ₩30,000,000 for staying beyond the permitted status or period (subparagraph 7), for working without a work-eligible status (subparagraph 8), and for activities under another status without a change-of-status permit (subparagraph 16). Article 95 carries up to 1 year or ₩10,000,000 for working somewhere other than the designated workplace (subparagraph 5) and for changing or adding a workplace without permission (subparagraph 6).

Article 46(1) makes such a person deportable — subparagraph 8 for breaches of Articles 17, 18, 20, 23, 24 and 25, and subparagraph 9 for unpermitted workplace change or addition. Article 11(1)6 then bars entry for 5 years after a deportee's departure. Article 102 allows a penalty-notice disposition (통고처분), imposing a fine (범칙금) in lieu of prosecution.

How many E-9 places exist in 2026

The 2026 E-9 intake is 80,000, decided at the 48th meeting of the Foreign Workforce Policy Committee (외국인력정책위원회) on 22 December 2025 and published as MOEL Public Notice No. 2025-489 (고용노동부 공고 제2025-489호) on 29 December 2025.

It breaks down as manufacturing 50,000 with mining included, agriculture and livestock 10,000 with forestry included, fisheries 7,000, construction 2,000, services 1,000 with restaurants included, plus a flexible allocation reserve of 10,000 deployable across industries. The temporary shipbuilding quota that ran from the second half of 2023 to 2025 is folded into the manufacturing quota. The figures include both new entrants and re-entrants.

That number is an annual ceiling, not a supply on demand, and it is released in rounds. Round 1 covered 15,784 new Employment Permits — manufacturing 11,275, agriculture and livestock 2,382, fisheries 1,495, construction 492 and services 140 — with applications from 26 January to 10 February 2026 and results on 3 March 2026.

Nobody's nationality entitles them to a share of it. Subparagraph 3 of Article 3 of the Enforcement Decree of the Act on the Employment of Foreign Workers (외국인근로자의 고용 등에 관한 법률 시행령) makes the industries and scale of foreign-worker intake by sending country a matter for the Foreign Workforce Policy Committee to decide. The national total is published; the per-country allocation is not.

Where to read next

If you have not sat the exam yet, the EPS-TOPIK guide covers the two exams, the sector minimums and how passers are actually decided.

If you are already working, the insurance guide covers what should and should not be deducted from your pay, and settles the relationship between departure guarantee insurance (출국만기보험) and statutory severance pay (퇴직금) before you leave.