Seoul Just Replaced Its Foreigner Portal With MY SEOUL+

5 min read

Soo House app's Discovery tab, showing filtered event and campaign listings and a Places to Visit feed, all in one screen

We've written before about how Seoul runs five separate support systems for foreign residents with overlapping names and no single front door. On September 1, 2026, the city quietly fixed one piece of that problem: it replaced its old foreigner portal — mostly a list of policy announcements — with MY SEOUL+ (마이서울플러스), a single site at global.seoul.go.kr built around what a foreign resident actually needs to do, not what the city wants to announce.

It isn't an app, and you don't install anything. It's a browser-based hub, and if you haven't looked at it yet, here's what actually changed.

  • Sept 1, 2026MY SEOUL+ launch date, replacing the old 서울외국인포털
  • 450,888Foreign residents in Seoul, 4.8% of the city's population (most recent official count)
  • 4Core languages built in — Korean, English, Chinese, Vietnamese — plus auto-translation for more
  • 02-2133-8689Seoul's Multicultural Affairs division, if the portal itself doesn't answer it

What's actually different

What MY SEOUL+ puts in one place: a menu tailored to who you are, an AI chatbot trained on the city's own service pages, a map of every support center citywide, and online booking for classes, consultations and meeting space One menu by who you are Students, workers, marriage migrants, overseas Koreans, migrant-background youth One AI chatbot Answers pulled straight from the portal's own registered content One map Every support center citywide, with hours, services and contact info One booking screen Reserve a Korean class, a legal or housing consult, or meeting space
Four things that used to mean four separate calls or visits, now on one page.

Old 서울외국인포털

A policy-announcement site. You read about a program; you still had to call around to actually use it.

MY SEOUL+

Topic pages for immigration, housing, work, health and education, a tailored-info menu by status, an AI chatbot, and booking built in.

How to actually use it

How to use MY SEOUL+: open global.seoul.go.kr in any browser, pick your status from the tailored menu, browse by topic or ask the AI chatbot, then book your appointment or class online 1. Open global.seoul.go.kr in any browser No app to download — phone or computer both work 2. Pick your status from the tailored menu Student, worker, marriage migrant, overseas Korean, or migrant-background youth 3. Browse by topic or ask the chatbot Immigration, housing, work, health and education, in four core languages 4. Book a class, consult or room — no office visit needed
Every step above used to mean a phone call to a different office.
The one that catches people If you already have the "MySeoul" app on your phone — the older multicultural-family app, separate from this — that's a different, pre-existing service. MY SEOUL+ isn't an app update to it; it's a new website, and it runs in your browser with no install at all.

Quick Hop: the map screen is worth bookmarking even if you never use the chatbot. It's the fastest way to find which of Seoul's many "global" centers — Seoul Global Center, the Seoul Foreign Resident Center, or your nearest Global Village Center — actually covers what you need, along with that location's current hours and whether it's taking walk-ins.

Soo, what? A portal redesign sounds like the least exciting kind of news. But the old setup genuinely cost people time — you'd read that a program existed, then still have to call three numbers to find out where, when and whether you qualified. Folding the lookup, the "who is this for," and the booking into one flow is a small change that saves a lot of actual phone calls.

What Soo House sees

Soo House runs community events, brand campaigns and creator classes for expats and foreign residents across Korea, and the same question comes up at almost every orientation-style meetup we host: "okay, but which office do I actually go to?" Not what the rule is — people usually find that part fine — but where the building is, whether you need an appointment, and whether anyone there speaks your language. That's the gap MY SEOUL+ is built to close, and it's the same gap our own app's Discovery tab exists to close on a much smaller scale: one feed of events, campaigns and places instead of a dozen separate group chats and flyers. We didn't build the city's portal, obviously — but we recognize the problem it's solving, because it's the first thing a new member usually asks us to fix too.

Your next hop: before your next visa, housing or Korean-class question, try global.seoul.go.kr first — pick your status, ask the chatbot, and see whether you can book what you need without a single phone call.

Checked November 13, 2026. MY SEOUL+'s September 1, 2026 launch, its replacement of the previous 서울외국인포털, its URL, supported languages, tailored-info menu by user type, AI chatbot, map-based facility directory and online booking for classes, consultations and room rentals, and the Multicultural Affairs division's contact number (02-2133-8689) all come from the Seoul Metropolitan Government's own announcement, last updated September 2, 2026. Seoul's foreign-resident count (450,888, 4.8% of 9,335,444) is Ministry of the Interior and Safety statistics cited in the 2026 외국인정책 시행계획 (지방자치단체) issued by the joint government ministries — the same figure and source used in our guide to Seoul's five support systems. Coverage and additional detail, including that the portal needs no app install and targets Seoul's 400,000-plus foreign residents, were cross-checked against the Korea Times. The pre-existing, separate "MySeoul" multicultural-family app is listed on its own on the Apple App Store. Portal features and contact details change — confirm anything time-sensitive on global.seoul.go.kr itself before relying on it.

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