D-10 Job-Seeker Visa Plan, October 2026: Three Years Against Today's Six-Month Grant

On 7 October 2026 Korea's Ministry of Justice announced a new visa plan for international students, and reports of the announcement put one number at its centre: a D-10 job-seeker stay that would run from one to three years, set by the graduate's Korean proficiency and job readiness. For a graduate deciding whether to stay in Korea and look for work, the reported change is the length of the search window; the way it is handed out is set by rules in force. Under the Korea Immigration Service's published stay guide, general D-10 status is granted six months at a time, and every month beyond a grant needs a separate extension permit under Article 25 of the Immigration Act.

“Three years” sounds like a single permission. Under today's rules it would be a ceiling over a chain of permissions, each with its own filing window and expiry date. This piece follows that chain through the Korea Legislation Research Institute, Immigration Act (official English translation) and the Immigration Service's stay guide, keeping the plan's reported figures apart from the rules in force.

The Scene

Take a graduate of a Korean university who holds D-2 student status and finishes an engineering degree next spring. The plan, as reported, is aimed at exactly this person: a science or engineering graduate with good Korean who wants an E-7 job in a designated sector such as manufacturing. The graduate reads the headline, sees three years, and plans a search that runs until the spring of 2030.

The first step is not an extension at all. Moving from D-2 to D-10 is a change of status, and the Act handles that in Article 24, which requires prior permission before the new activity starts. Once the change is granted, the graduate holds general D-10 status for the period printed in the Immigration Service guide, the Korea Immigration Service, Visa Navigator: Customized Stay Guide for Foreign Residents, edition Ver 2023.05. Its overview table puts three entries in the Job Seeker (D-10) row: “6 months”, “(High-Tech Internship: 1 year)” and “(Extendable)”.

So a three-year search, if each grant stays at six months, is six grants end to end: the first from the change of status, the other five by extension permit. The guide's question-and-answer pages set the timing: “You may apply for an extension of stay no earlier than four months before your status of stay expires.” It closes the window from the other side: “You must submit your application by the expiration date.” For an online application the guide moves the last day forward by one, saying “the application must be filed the day before the expiration date at the latest”.

Halfway through, a manufacturer offers an internship. The guide caps that on a different clock. Internships are allowed “Up to 1 year during the period of holding Job Seeker (D-10) status”, followed by a bracketed limit: “(Yet, a maximum of 6 months is allowed in the same company)”. When the job offer finally arrives, the move from D-10 to E-7 is a second change of status under Article 24. A full three-year search on today's machinery means seven applications: one change in, five extensions, one change out.

What the Rule Actually Says

Four articles of the Immigration Act carry the chain, and each has a fixed number of branches. The text quoted here is the official English translation whose header lists Act No. 19070 of 13 December 2022 as the most recent amendment.

Article 10-2 sorts every status into two kinds. It has two paragraphs, and paragraph (1) has two subparagraphs. Subparagraph 1 is short-term stay, permitted “for not more than 90 days”, or longer under a visa exemption agreement or reciprocity, for tourism, visits and similar purposes. Subparagraph 2 is the one that matters here: “Status of long-term stay: a status of stay by which it is permitted to stay in the Republic of Korea within a maximum period exceeding 90 days prescribed by Ordinance of the Ministry of Justice for the purpose of study, training, investment, presence for business, marriage, etc.” The maximum period sits in a ministerial Ordinance, not in the Act. Paragraph (2) then hands the list of statuses, who is eligible, and the scope of activity under each one to a Presidential Decree, drawn up “in consideration of the purpose of stay, whether employment activities are permissible, etc.” The article was inserted on 20 March 2018.

That placement keeps the length of a D-10 stay out of the Act itself: the maximum period sits in a ministry Ordinance and the shape of D-10 in a Presidential Decree.

Article 25 is the extension rule, with two paragraphs. Paragraph (1) reads: “Every alien who intends to continue to stay in excess of the permitted period of stay shall obtain permission to extend his or her period of stay from the Minister of Justice before the expiration of the permitted period of stay, as prescribed by Presidential Decree.” The permission extends a permitted period, so a three-year total is reached only through permitted periods, and the application must come before expiry. Paragraph (2), inserted on 9 June 2020, adds: “Standards for examining whether to grant permission to extend the period of stay under paragraph (1) shall be prescribed by Ordinance of the Ministry of Justice.” Each extension is a fresh decision, not a renewal by default.

Article 24 governs the two changes of status at either end, and it has three paragraphs. Paragraph (1): “If an alien staying in the Republic of Korea intends to engage in any activity permitted under a status of stay not covered by his or her original status of stay, the alien shall obtain prior permission to change his or her original status of stay from the Minister of Justice, as prescribed by Presidential Decree.” Paragraph (2) is a separate track for a person who falls under a subparagraph of Article 31(1) and whose status changes, with permission due “within 30 days of the change of his or her status”. A graduate moving from D-2 to D-10 is changing activity, the case paragraph (1) covers. Paragraph (3) leaves the examination standards to the Ordinance, as Article 25 does.

Article 20, a single paragraph, covers activity added on top of a status. A person who wants to do something another status permits, while keeping the original one, “shall obtain prior permission to engage in such activities, other than those permitted under his or her original status of stay, from the Minister of Justice”. This is the door for student part-time work, and the guide puts it plainly for D-2 holders: “Employment and for-profit activities by international students are prohibited in principle but are allowed only when permission is obtained in advance for part-time work or for activities other than those permitted under the status of stay previously granted”.

A fifth provision is where the English text itself can mislead. Article 18(1) reads: “Every alien who intends to engage in employment in the Republic of Korea shall obtain the status of stay that entitles him or her to engage in job-seeking activities, as prescribed by Presidential Decree.” The sentence opens with employment and closes with job-seeking, so in this translation “job-seeking activities” names the work that an employment status allows. Article 10-2(2) calls the same thing “employment activities”. The guide's D-10 row uses the phrase the other way round, describing D-10 holders as “Persons engaging in job-seeking activities for employment, preparing a start-up, or doing internship in high-tech field at a company meeting the relevant requirements”. There, job-seeking means looking for work. The D-10 label is not the Article 18 status that entitles a person to work; paid work during D-10 runs through its own conditions.

The Numbers

Start with the grant. At six months per grant, the plan's ceiling of three years is 36 months, or six grants. One comes from the change of status out of D-2; the remaining five are Article 25 extensions. The plan's floor of one year is 12 months, or two grants: one change and one extension. On the high-tech internship track, where the guide sets the grant at one year, three years is three grants and two extensions.

Then the window. The guide opens each filing window four months before expiry and closes it on the expiration date, or the day before for an online filing. Inside a six-month grant, that window opens at the end of month two, so four of every six months, two-thirds of the grant, sit inside an open window. Across the five extensions of a three-year search that is 20 of the 36 months. The risk is the opposite of a rush: a filing that slips past the last day falls outside Article 25(1), which requires the application before the permitted period runs out.

Next, the year. One year appears three times in the material, and each time it measures something different. In the plan, as reported, it is the floor of the D-10 stay. In the guide's D-10 row, it is the length of a single grant on the high-tech internship track. In the guide's internship rule, it is a cap on internship time during the whole D-10 period, with six months at any one company. At the plan's floor, the 12-month internship cap equals the entire stay. At the ceiling it is one-third of the 36 months, and the same-company limit of six months is one-sixth.

The language threshold repeats the same way. Reports say the plan would spare a student at TOPIK level 4 or higher, or at level 4 of the Korea Immigration and Integration Program, a separate proof of funds. The guide already uses TOPIK level 4 twice. For D-2 part-time work it says: “Permission is restricted if the type of business is listed as manufacturing or construction on the certificate of business registration, but exceptions can be made for those possessing TOPIK level 4 or higher in the case of manufacturing”. For D-10 part-time work, one of the listed conditions is “Those who have obtained TOPIK level 4 or higher”, and the same item adds a passed Social Integration Program evaluation. One certificate level, three doors. Reports also put the plan's student part-time test at integration program level 3, a fourth yardstick on a different scale.

The guide also gives a points line inside D-10. For a job seeker admitted through the points system, a spouse and minor children can join on F-3 status “only when the principal status holder’s total score is 80 points or higher”.

Finally, the baseline. Coverage describes today's total D-10 stay as one to two years. The guide pages extracted here print the per-grant figure but no total cap, so that baseline is reported as coverage gives it, unchecked against a primary text.

What Would Invalidate This

Three points rest on documents not fully checked.

The first is the grant length. The six-month figure comes from the 2023 edition of the Visa Navigator guide. The per-grant ceiling lives in a Ministry of Justice Ordinance under Article 10-2(1), and that Ordinance was not read for this piece. If the ministry lengthens each grant, the count of five extensions shrinks.

The second is the statute's version. The English translation lists Act No. 19070 of 13 December 2022 as its latest amendment, and its supplementary provisions were not reached. A later amendment to Articles 20, 24 or 25 would not show in that text.

The third is the plan itself. The ministry's own release, the Ministry of Justice press release on moving student visa policy from recruitment to growth, could not be opened in full here. Every plan figure is described as reported, and none of it is a rule in force until the ministry publishes implementing standards.

Where This Doesn't Apply

The six-grant count assumes the general job-seeker track. On the high-tech internship track, with one-year grants, the count falls to three. Tech start-up preparers form a third D-10 track with its own conditions, and the guide restricts internships on that track; the internship arithmetic above does not transfer to that track.

Graduates who already hold a residence or permanent residence status allowing broader work have no reason to enter the D-10 chain. Short-term stay, generally limited by Article 10-2(1) to 90 days, sits in subparagraph 1; the grant-and-extension arithmetic belongs to subparagraph 2. The Article 24(2) track, with its 30-day deadline, belongs to persons under the subparagraphs of Article 31(1) whose own status changes; a student changing activity files under paragraph (1).

Special extension rules sit beside Article 25, among them Article 25-2, wholly amended on 13 December 2022, and the national-emergency rule inserted on 3 February 2022. They fall outside the ordinary count.

Family invitations for points-system job seekers run on the separate 80-point line. And the two reported language thresholds, TOPIK level 4 for funds and integration program level 3 for part-time work, concern admission and student work, not the length of a D-10 grant.

A worker on the employment permit system faces a different statute; the rules on E-9 workplace changes and the three-move cap run under the foreign workers' employment law, not under Articles 24 and 25 alone.

If You Are Actually in This Situation

Read the expiry date on the residence card, not the plan's headline. That date is the end of the permitted period that Article 25(1) measures. Count back four months: that is the earliest day the guide lets an extension be filed. The last day is the expiry date itself, or the day before it for an online filing.

Count the grants rather than the years. Under today's six-month grant, a one-year search means one change of status and one extension; a three-year search means one change and five extensions, each examined against standards set by Ordinance under Article 25(2). Put every window on a calendar at the start, because 20 of the 36 months fall inside one.

Keep an internship log. The guide's caps are 12 months in total during D-10 and six months at one company, and they run on their own clock, separate from the grants. At the plan's one-year floor, the internship cap uses up the whole stay.

Before any paid work, check which permission it needs. Work added on top of a status is an Article 20 permission, granted in advance; a move into a work status is an Article 24(1) change, also in advance. The guide treats a student's part-time work as prohibited unless the permission comes first, and its D-10 part-time conditions include TOPIK level 4.

Watch the plan's timing. Reports say measures within the ministry's own authority begin in 2026, without effective dates; until standards are posted, an application filed this month is judged under the rules quoted above. The same lesson appears in how Korea counts six months of residence for health insurance: the period that matters is the one on the official record, not the one in the headline.