International Movers to South Korea

Direction of travel

Which way does the move go?

The guides here are written for a household leaving Britain. The return trip is not covered.

Sequence

What should I sort out first, and what last?

Visa first, because the length of stay decides what Customs does with your goods. Port and customs office come last.

1. Visa and passport. GOV.UK tells anyone travelling for another purpose than short business or tourism to “check visa requirements with the South Korean Embassy in the UK”. The UK to South Korea page explains passport validity, the K-ETA exemption and the e-Arrival card.
2. Customs. A person moving to live in Korea for a year or more may bring used household effects within six months of arrival; the customs page lists the limits and flags what we could not read.
3. Port and customs office. Pick the page closest to your city. The customs service lists separate offices for Seoul and Incheon, and none for Busan.
4. Car and pets. A car has a three-month registration rule and estimated duty; pet rules are not confirmed. The customs page covers both.

British-end paperwork is in the UK customs documentation checklist, and the international moving checklist sets out a timeline.

Entry and customs rules

Where are the visa and customs rules?

Two nationwide guides hold the rules that do not change from city to city.

To see how a quote is built, the sea freight guide and the removals cost guide help.

Cities and ports

Which page matches my destination?

A sea shipment lands at a port and finishes by road. Pick the city nearest your new home; each page says what was confirmed and what was not.

• The capital: Seoul, with the customs office for household goods and the towns around it.
• The west coast: Incheon, the port, free economic zone and airport city beside Seoul.
• The south-east: Busan, the larger container port, with Ulsan, Changwon and the south coast.

Most port and city facts here come from Wikipedia. Each page says which authority pages failed to load.

Other cities

Which other cities are named here?

No page exists for the cities listed here. They appear because a customs office, a census count or an administrative change is worth knowing, and we read no city moving rule for any of them.

• Daejeon (1,469,299 in 2025): the Korea Customs Service moving page lists “Daejeon Customs, Clearance Facilitation Section” among its contacts, and gives its own head office as “BUILDING 1, GOVERNMENT COMPLEX-DAEJEON, 189, CHEONGSA-RO, SEO-GU, DAEJEON”. Wikipedia reports “As of 2023, the number of registered foreign residents in Daejeon was 21,949” and that “multiple national administrative functions were moved from Seoul to Daejeon”. The page does not say which addresses Daejeon Customs serves, so Daejeon has no page yet. Cheongju (879,244) and Sejong (392,471) lie to the north, “to the north by Sejong City and Cheongju in North Chungcheong Province”.
• Daegu (2,363,643): the inland city on the line to Busan. Its only sourced fact is that “Daegu hosts three American military bases, Camp Henry, Camp George, and Camp Walker”, which does not help a household plan, so it is named and not given a page.
• Gwangju and the south-west: Gwangju was merged into Jeonnam-Gwangju in 2026, as the Busan guide explains. Jeonju had 641,632 residents in 2025.
• Jeju and the east coast: Jeju had 491,186 residents and Pohang 490,882 at the 2025 census. We read no port, ferry or customs source for either.

A browser read of Korean municipal, port or customs-office pages might change that; until then they stay named only.

Every guide

Every South Korea guide, by topic and by city

Each guide ends with its sources. A city without a guide is named on the nearest larger page.

Questions

Common questions about moving to South Korea