No free-visa yet for Filipinos in S. Korea due to large number of illegal workers – official

November 25, 2019

A huge number of Filipinos illegally staying in South Korea is one of the reasons why the South Korean government has yet to offer free-visa policy for Filipino tourists.

In a press briefing in Busan, South Korea, Korean Ambassador to the Philippines Han Dong-man said they hope to have a free-visa policy between the two countries in the future.

Han said there are around 15,000 Filipinos illegally staying in South Korea.

“We hope, in the near future we can have a free visa policy between Korea and the Philippines. But so far, there are certain numbers of illegal Filipinos in Korea,” he said.

“That’s why our visa policy is that if we can stop the entry of illegal people, naturally we can have a free visa policy. But still there are many illegal people so... approximately fifteen thousand,” he added.

Han said the common reason why Filipinos are illegally staying in South Korea is because of “very high salary.”

“So accordingly, we give many salaries that means in terms of your standard. For example, for the first year, we—they give about $1,500 and one year later US$2,000. They are entitled to stay for four years and six months but they could apply for one more time but some of them are tempted to stay illegally because they can get very high salary,” he explained.

He added the lessons they learned from Thailand is also one of the reasons why they are having a hard time allowing Filipinos to enter South Korea without visas.

“And we have also lessons from Thailand. I asked my government because all in Asia, the Thailand and the Philippines sent troops during the Korean War. While Thailand has a free visa policy, so accordingly there are many, many Thai people before are staying illegally in Korea,” said Han.

According to the Korean ambassador, the number of Filipino tourists who went to South Korea increased by 20 percent compared to last year.

“So, accordingly there are many cases of delays on issuing visa so I asked my staff in charge of visa to facilitate ways to simplify the visa document so that more Filipinos will be able to visit Korea,” he said.

“But every day, we receive about one thousand or five hundred applications, so we’ll try to bring more steps for the in charge of our visa from Seoul to facilitate the visa process,” he added.

While his office was trying to control the entry of illegal workers in South Korea, Han said they will just continue to provide ten-year multiple visas for qualified Filipinos.

“So, I asked my staff to issue as many as multiple-visa as possible. So we introduce ten-year multiple-visa category also. So, we will continue to provide multiple-visa to qualified Filipino people and we will also work with your Department of Justice and also Korean Department of Justice will try to control or to lower the number of illegal people so that eventually we can have free visa policy in one day,” he said.

According to Philippine Ambassador to South Korea Noe Wong, Tourism Secretary Bernadette Romulo- Puyat can raise this issue with her counterpart.

Wong said Koreans who wish to visit the Philippines can stay for maximum of 45 days without applying for visas.

“Because they have --- no, there’s no need for visa for them to go there within the specific time while we are aspiring and in fact so many complaints about the length of time now in getting visa in the South --- in the Korean Embassy, right? From 15 days to 30 days to even 45 days now,” he said.

According to Department of Tourism, a total of 1,450,792 Koreans visited the Philippines for the first nine months of 2019 placing them on the top list of tourist arrivals. Ella Dionisio/DMS