F-4 Visa Korea: What Changed for Work When H-2 Merged Into It in 2026

On February 12, 2026, the Ministry of Justice folded one of Korea's most confusing visa categories into another. 방문취업 (H-2), the visiting-employment visa built specifically for ethnic Koreans from China and the former Soviet states, stopped existing as its own track — anyone still eligible converts instead to 재외동포 (F-4), the general overseas-Korean status that compatriots from the US, Canada, Australia and everywhere else already hold. The Ministry's own reasoning was blunt: treating a compatriot differently based on which country they happened to be born in was the problem the merger was built to fix. Six months later, it reported that more than half of H-2 holders had already made the switch. If you're one of the roughly 864,245 people living in Korea as a foreign-nationality overseas Korean — or about to become one — what you're actually allowed to get paid for changed underneath you, whether you filed anything or not.

• Feb 12, 2026H-2 folded into F-4; the new work-restriction notice took effect the same day
• 54%Of H-2 holders had converted to F-4 within six months, per the Ministry's Aug 11, 2026 update
• 864,245Foreign-nationality overseas Koreans (외국국적동포) living in Korea, 2024

What H-2 was, and why F-4 is different

H-2 only ever existed for compatriots from China and the former Soviet states, and it came with a quota and a sector list — the kind of blue-collar and service work also open to Employment Permit System workers, renewed in blocks tied to your registered employer. F-4 was never built that way. It's the general overseas-Korean status, open regardless of birth country, and the default is broad employment access rather than a sector list — you're not restricted unless your situation falls into one of a small number of named exceptions.

What's actually restricted now

The default under the Immigration Control Act's enforcement decree (Article 23, paragraph 3) is that F-4 status carries no employment restriction. The exceptions fall into three categories, and only one of them has a regional escape hatch:

The specific scope of the "simple labor" restriction is set by a separate Ministry of Justice notice — 법무부고시 제2026-65호, effective the same day as the merger — issued under that same Article 23, paragraph 3. We checked the notice's own publication page on the Ministry's site, which confirms the legal basis and the effective date, but the detailed job list sits in an attached file we couldn't retrieve directly. What we can confirm: classification runs on the actual work you do, not your job title or industry — a cleaning role and a managerial role at the same company can land on opposite sides of the line. Don't take a secondhand job list on faith, including this one; check the duties against the current notice through Hi Korea or an immigration office before you accept paid work that might qualify as simple labor.

The regional exception — and the one it isn't

Two separate things carry F-4 holders out of the simple-labor restriction, and they're easy to mix up:

Neither exception touches the public-morals/social-order restriction — that one holds regardless of where you live or work.

What we see at Soo House

Soo House runs paid campaigns, classes and community meetups for expats and foreign residents across Korea — and we have members on nearly every visa category this site writes about, F-4 included. Every paid campaign's application form asks for your residence status up front, F-4 as its own option alongside the work visas, because eligibility genuinely differs by category and we'd rather catch a mismatch before someone spends an afternoon filming content than after. The campaigns Soo House runs — brand collaborations, event hosting, short-form content — sit well outside anything resembling simple labor, but the question "does my status actually cover this" is one we hear constantly from compatriot members navigating the H-2-to-F-4 switch specifically, which is exactly why this one was worth writing before the next one in rotation.

Your next hop: if you converted from H-2 this year, or you're applying for F-4 for the first time, don't assume last year's H-2 rules about where you could work still apply — check your actual role against the current notice through Hi Korea before you start, especially if it's anything manual or service-based.

Checked in October 2026 against the Ministry of Justice's own notice pages — 법무부고시 제2026-65호, 재외동포(F-4) 자격의 취업활동 제한범위 고시 for the notice number, legal basis and February 12, 2026 effective date; the February 11, 2026 announcement on the F-4 status integration for the merger's reasoning and the ~864,000-person compatriot population it affects; and the August 11, 2026 update reporting the 54% H-2-to-F-4 conversion rate — plus the 2024 외국국적동포 total from the government's index.go.kr statistics page. The restriction structure (Article 23, paragraph 3 of the Immigration Control Act's enforcement decree) is described here from secondary legal references summarizing the statute; confirm the current text yourself at law.go.kr before relying on it, and check any specific job against the notice through Hi Korea or your regional immigration office — we could not retrieve the notice's attached job list directly and are not reporting any figure for it here. For the newer regional visa program this isn't the same as, see Korea's metropolitan visa program.