A practical guide to moving to Korea with your kids in 2025
This chaotic post is dedicated to my Korean American friends who have been mulling this decision since January 20, 2025!
In the past decade, I’ve encountered an increasing number of parents of Korean heritage contemplating a move to the motherland to help their children discover the culture and learn the language. I definitely see it a lot more these days, particularly among young Korean American parents who are looking to escape their country for the next four years.
As someone who spends 50% of her free time trying to convince all her friends to move to Korea and who also loves giving unsolicited advice, I offer you the guide you never explicitly asked for: how to navigate moving to Korea with your family in 2025.
Please Note: This is specifically written for those families who are able to easily obtain a residency F4 visa through one of the parents’ Korean heritage, but you may be able to move to Korea as a foreigner under other circumstances.
Determine your location based not just on budget, but also on assets
Housing deposits (보증금) are incredibly high in Korea. Like, closer-to-your-net-worth-than-your-monthly-salary high. This is why often it’s your assets, and not your monthly budget, that will likely determine where you live, and what kind of housing structure you’ll live in.
Those coming to Korea will usually choose to live in Seoul or the surrounding Gyeonggi area (aka Seoul Capital Area (SCA) or 수도권) because that’s what makes sense and honestly, even the locals in that area don’t really know what’s beyond Seoul. Seoul is where the majority of the jobs, culture, and people are, but things are changing. People now move to Korea with remote jobs and odd working hours. They’re self-employed! They’ve figured out how to monetize their YouTube channels! Welcome to other options, aka the rest of Korea.
Remember: You only have to live in Seoul if your job is there
Within Korea, I’ve lived in the capital, a planned large suburban city, a small historic city, and a probably what’s best described as a hamlet within a province that’s literally going extinct. And let me tell you, Korea, being relatively compact, homogenous, and quick to adapt and standardize, is pretty much the same everywhere we’ve lived. With the exception of the rural countryside, Korea is Korea is Korea.
If your goal is to live in Korea to learn a language and culture, you don’t necessarily need to pay a premium for it in Seoul. If you want to limit how much you spend on housing and if you’re not tied down to a location, you’ll have more options and range outside of Seoul and Gyeonggi.
When I did some research recently, I found that there was a 10x price difference between a deposit for a similar apartment in a similar neighborhood in Hwaseong, Gyeonggi (pop: 1 mil), where we used to live, and Jinju, Gyeongnam (pop. 345,000), where we live now. 10 times more! For location! Which takes me to…
Getting an apartment or house in Korea is easy, cobbling together the key deposit is the hard part.
Thankfully, there’s no housing shortage in Korea. Actually, I would argue that getting housing in Korea is super easy—if you have money. No letters to write to sellers or landlords convincing them that you’re good people raising dear kids in their lovely homes, no co-signers to vouch for you—just cold, hard cash.
This is possible not only because rental deposits are sky-high, but also because Koreans only care about money (just stating facts, lol). Landlords don’t need to validate your jobs and ability to afford rent, since they’re holding your net worth deposit hostage in case you fall behind on rent.
You can live in many different types of housing, but most people with kids will prefer apartments (아파트) or apartments with retail space (주상복합, usually less units than apartment complexes but more or less the same and often more convenient). Villas (빌라) are also apartments in low-rise buildings, but they usually lack the amenities, playgrounds, and community of bona fide apartments. (I’ll save a breakdown of all the housing options and their cultural connotations for another post.)
How high is rent for an apartment in Korea? Here’s what the local housing market looks like in 2025 Q1:
A 33-pyong (1,174 sq ft) apartment next to an elementary school in a highly desirable planned city in Hwaseong, Gyeonggi-do will require a 300,000,000 KRW deposit with around 1,000,000 to 1,500,000 KRW monthly rent.
But that’s for a booming area of Gyeonggi, which is in the Seoul Capital Area where everything is expensive. Four hours south in Gyeongnam, a slightly smaller 31-pyong apartment next to an elementary school in Jinju, a smaller yet historically significant city connected to Seoul by KTX, will require a deposit of 30,000,000 KRW / 950,000 KRW monthly. That’s one-tenth (!!!) of the deposit required to live in the same kind of housing in the same kind of neighborhood.
Obtain a new address by December (February at the latest) to qualify for services and support for Korean-learning children.
Remember that the school year always starts on the first weekday after March 1 (Independence Movement Day, a public holiday) and second semester begins around the first week of September. To be assigned to an elementary school, you must live in the assigned district (배정단지 or 배정동). You can use Naver Pay Real Estate (네이버부동산) to see what school your apartment is assigned to. Like motivated parents everywhere, most Koreans will choose the school before moving into the apartment complex. Real estate agents are the best source for schools, reputations, and school designation. Be sure to check the latest with an expert because some new apartments might be right next to a school, but new students may be assigned to one farther away if the school is at full capacity.
Unless you’re going to send kids to a designated multi-cultural school in a diverse part of Korea (which you probably wouldn’t want, since you want your kids to learn Korean, right?) or your new school serendipitously has a language assistant teacher, you will not have access to additional free help if you move in the middle of the school year. A child in first or second grade may or may not need language support, but older kids might.
In September, we had a new student join our school from overseas. She didn’t speak a word of Korean, so the school looked into getting additional personnel for language support. But because they submitted the request in the middle of the school year, the school did not receive the assistant teacher. This varies by school regional district, but I know from working with our school’s organizing committee in Gyeongnam that all teacher and staff HR changes are submitted in December and finalized in February. That means that you should have your new address registered at the local district office by then so that the child can be registered to that school. The catch is that once your address is registered in that district, you are legally bound to start attending school if your kids are in compulsory schooling age (grade 1, around age 6). So if you move in December, you may have to send your kids to a brand new school for a couple weeks before the end of the school year.
Your eldest child should be 10 years old or younger when you move.
Don’t move to Korea “for a couple years” if your child is set to enroll into middle school within those couple years. From everything I’ve seen and heard and am starting to personally experience, raising kids in Korea is great up until elementary school.
From grades 7 to 9, kids in Korea go to middle school which is when the academic hunger games start and they spend more time in after-school cram schools than anywhere else. Even if that’s not how you plan to raise your kids, trust me, they will want to spend more time with their peers, and their peers are in cram schools.
Plus, think about people you know who moved to a new country and acquired a new language as children. Everyone I know who moved to the US before fourth grade naturally acquired native level fluency without putting in any effort. But I’ve seen and heard from many people who moved after fifth grade that they struggled to learn and navigate a new language and culture. This isn’t simply a matter of having a “good” accent, but more about the struggles of growing up in a foreign country with the additional hurdle of language barrier. Yes, children are resilient, but change is hard.
I would argue that birth (because joriwon is life!) to third grade is the best time to raise kids in Korea. It’s generally said that public school is easy up to third grade in Korea. Korean schools tend to group 1~3 grades, and 4~6 grades together. After fourth grade and higher is when academics, particularly math, become more challenging.
So take advantage of the low crime rate and universal childcare and healthcare while the kids are young… and peace out of the hyper image consciousness and materialistic culture as they start getting more aware and angsty and impressionable.
Which takes me to the next point.
If moving to Korea is on your mind and your kids are young, just do it now (but be sure to give yourself a deadline and plan to move back)
If you’re seriously considering a move to Korea, there’s really nothing good about waiting a few more years to dwell on it. In fact, being younger in general helps you in Korea because Korea is a bit ageist. 😅
The only advice I would have for anyone moving here is to make sure you have a plan and timeline to move back. If you have family here, and love it and settle down like I do, that’s great! But most transplants do eventually get homesick. It’s one thing to be homesick, and another to be homesick but feel stuck with no concrete way to transition your career and family back to your home country.
Aim to earn USD/EUR/GBP while living in Korea (or maybe work for Samsung or Coupang with an expat package).
The best of both worlds is earning USD while living in Korea, especially in times like these when 1 USD = 1,350 to 1,450 KRW. Ideally, you’d have your own online business or a remote job that pays you in a foreign, stronger currency that you can easily withdraw from ATMs in Korea.
The other alternative is to get a job at a global Korean company. If you must, get a job at a big Korean company while you’re still abroad, and try to negotiate a relocation package that includes housing. Hopefully with the right package, you may not even have to worry about your deposit or monthly rent. (Although you may have to worry about a toxic work culture, but you didn’t hear that from me!) All things considered, the best jobs in Korea are for native Korean speakers with fluency in English, not the other way around, so don’t move to Korea expecting to find fulfilling jobs locally as an English-only speaker.
If you’re a man under 45 of Korean heritage, confirm that your parents were not Korean citizens at the time of your birth (unless you want to serve 18 months of mandatory military service).
This has to be said because I’d hate for some unassuming Korean American man to spend the first 18 months of his family’s move to Korea sporting a buzz cut at the DMZ.
Even if you’ve never had Korean citizenship and were born abroad, if one of your parents were Korean citizens at the time of your birth, you’re obliged to serve in the Korean military. If you’ve ever been added to a family registry in Korea, that can cause issues as well. Korea’s military draft laws seem to be constantly changing, so consult with an expert or immigration lawyer as needed, but for some preliminary research, the USFK website seems to have many of the details you need.
You’ll probably get tired of living in Korea eventually (but you should still move there).
There’s so much to gain from a change of culture and perspective, for both children and adults, but one thing I realized from living in so many places is that there is no such thing as the perfect place to live. And usually, you’ll realize that around the two year mark.
Even if you make the highly-anticipated move to Korea, you may wake up one day exasperated. The safety of walking around solo at night might start to feel less impressive when you’re getting elbowed on the sidewalk during the day. The incredible food might not taste as good after hearing one too many unsolicited comments about your weight gain. And that $2 hospital visit? Might not feel like such a bargain when you’re dealing with poor bedside manner.
But hey, by then your kids will be fluent in Korean and you can move back to a place that feels like home and start this adjustment process all over again! Or if you’re not ready to give up on Korea just yet, stayed tuned for my next guide, tentatively titled: How to live a good and fruitful life in Korea.
—
I think I covered all the bases I wanted to, but as always, I’d love to hear some more first-hand accounts of moving to Korea as a non-citizen. If you have any wisdom or tips for others, please share them in the comments. :)